NORTH KOREA has so far refused to set a date for inspections of its declared nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) even though the United States and South Korea are leaning over backwards trying to get it to do so.
With three days to go before the latest IAEA deadline for North Korean compliance expires, the US has walked out of talks aimed at ending North Korean intransigence, while CIA Director James Woolsey has again asserted that North Korea is the ''world's top danger spot''.
In Seoul, at a press conference marking his first year in office, South Korean President Kim Young-sam has called for a summit meeting between himself and North Korean President Kim Il-sung. But in Pyongyang, North Korean propaganda has criticised the South Korean President for being ''no different'' from his military predecessors.
Meeting in Vienna last Wednesday, the IAEA governing council, which had previously set February 21 as its deadline, gave North Korea until the end of this month to set a firm, early date for the start of IAEA inspections of North Korea's seven declared nuclear facilities.
North Korea had managed to abort the earlier deadline by saying that it would accept a one-time restricted inspection of these facilities, but it then proceeded to avoid either setting a date or providing the IAEA with the visas which its inspectors required.
The IAEA went out of its way to please the US, and also to appease China, which had opposed the setting of any firm deadline for the inspections themselves, by carefully not calling the new deadline an ultimatum.