AS the International Atomic Energy Agency board of directors discusses North Korea's nuclear weapons programme today in Vienna, it is faced with the prospect of complete deadlock in the attempts to resume inspections of North Korea's nuclear facilities.
The extremely hardline North Korean official statement put out on Monday appears consistent only with North Korea playing for time while pursuing its nuclear programme - and perhaps finally carrying out its year-long threat to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Earlier, it was expected that the agency's board would resolve the issue once and for all by declaring that North Korea had defaulted on inspections and that it would pass the matter back to the UN Security Council for action, probably the imposition of sanctions.
Then on February 15 hopes were raised as North Korea appeared to agree to agencu inspections of its seven declared installations.
Monday's statement would appear to demolish all such hopes.
The agency, and the US, assumed that North Korea was agreeing to regular inspections of these seven installations. The North Korean statement made it clear that Pyongyang was agreeing to a one-time limited inspection only.
The US, South Korea and Japan assumed that North Korea would still discuss special agency inspections of two suspect nuclear waste sites in future negotiations.