President Bush's decision to lift American trade sanctions on North Korea and to remove it from the US blacklist of states supporting terrorism is a remarkable turnaround in policy towards the Stalinist state that he once branded as part of the “axis of evil”. It is a step of huge importance, both for North Korea and for the region, prompted by Pyongyang's handover yesterday, after years of prevarication, of the accounts of its nuclear work to Chinese officials. The surprise throughout Asia is matched only by the sudden hope that North Korea may at last be ready to renounce its nuclear weapons and co-operate in global attempts to enforce non-proliferation.

President Bush has reacted swiftly to North Korea's “Libya moment”, calling the move a positive step, though only a first step. In truth, this is a triumph for the slow, stuttering and fraught six-nation talks on Pyongyang's nuclear programme, and for the two nations that have taken the lead: the United States and China. Indeed, for China the result could not have come at a more opportune moment. Barely six weeks before the Olympics, Beijing is able to show the world that it has used its influence to break the deadlock in one of the most intractable issues of our time - an achievement that it hopes will offset the protests and denunciations of Chinese policy in Tibet and on Darfur.

What prompted North Korea to give the Chinese a 60-page record of its nuclear work will probably remain as opaque as every decision in this unpredictable state. But the consequences are, politically, momentous. North Korea can now glimpse a route to emerging from its self-imposed isolation with the encouragement of its neighbours, and in the expectation that desperately needed economic aid will be forthcoming. Its pariah status has benefited no one, and certainly not its people, who have suffered untold hardships over the past two generations. Regional security in East Asia need no longer be jeopardised by the ever-present threat of a maverick nation to use a nuclear bomb.