Doubts remain over whether the secretive regime in Pyongyang is genuinely prepared to give up its atomic ambitions, or whether it is cunningly stringing the world along in return for energy aid and other incentives, they said.

"After receiving all promised shipments of heavy oil, North Korea is likely to start a new round of hardball," Yoichiro Sato, an associate professor at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, told AFP.

As part of a six-nation agreement announced on Wednesday, North Korea said it would declare all its nuclear programmes and disable its main atomic reactor at Yongbyon by the end of the year.

The deal would implement the second phase of an accord brokered through the six-party process, which China hosts, in February that aims to see the North eventually completely scrap all of its nuclear weapons programmes.

In return, the impoverished nation has been promised a wide range of incentives, including one million tonnes of fuel oil as a prelude to much more economic aid.

It has also been offered the hope of establishing diplomatic ties with the United States and being removed from Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism.

"It is a clear step forward but it doesn't fundamentally break any new ground," Daniel Sneider, an Asia Pacific specialist at Stanford University in the United States, said of Wednesday's announcement.

"Every step we take ... at least creates the potential for moving toward complete disarmament. We just have to be realistic about how long and difficult that path might be and not create unrealistic expectations."

Sneider, Sato and other observers highlighted a myriad of problems that threaten to derail the disarmament process.

One of the more pressing issues is the question of whether North Korea has secretly set up a highly enriched uranium programme, aside from the plutonium project that it has already declared at the Yongbyon reactor.

Both highly enriched uranium and plutonium can be used to make nuclear weapons.

In 2002, Washington claimed that North Korea had admitted to running a clandestine highly enriched uranium scheme in violation of a 1994 disarmament accord brokered with the United States.

The North denied the claim and responded by restarting the Yongbyon reactor that had been frozen under the 1994 accord and eventually conducting its first atomic test in October last year.

No one is sure exactly how much nuclear material -- plutonium- or uranium-based -- the North now has.

These questions are meant to be answered by the end of this year, according to the six-nation agreement announced Wednesday.

"We need to know how much nuclear material they have produced, where is it, what has been weaponised, where the equipment that did it is located," said San Francisco-based Scott Bruce, from the Nautilus Institute, a think tank with a mission of reducing global insecurity.

"North Korea on the other hand may attempt to stall on some of the details related to the nuclear weapons themselves."

Bruce said North Korea may indeed be willing to barter its nuclear weapons programme away for international legitimacy, aid and access to development funds.

"It also may be the case that, having tied the nuclear weapons to the legitimacy of the state and his leadership, (North Korean leader) Kim Jong-Il will not trade in the bombs for any price," he said.

Sato also highlighted the fact that North Korea had developed its nuclear weapons programme despite signing the 1994 disarmament accord with the United States and participating in the six-nation talks since 2003.

"The recent agreement could merely constitute a return to the year 1994 with a new reality of bombs in North Korea's hands," he said.

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