Richard Lloyd-Parry, Asia Editor of The Times, says that the world will now have to engage in dialogue with North Korea, as it has few other options that will work

What are the diplomatic and military implications of this?

The immediate effect will be that there will be a lot of tough talking - mostly from the Americans and Japanese.

In the long-term there isn't realistically much that the rest of the world can do about this. The international community has very few options.

A military attack from America is out of the question because it would result in a significant war. South Korea wouldn't stand for that and I do not think the American public would either.

I think we will see sanctions. There may be some sort of shipping blockade but that won't have much of an impact as North Korea does not have significant trade.

I do think that the only way forward is engagement. We may not like cosying up to a profoundly obnoxious regime but there are no alternatives.

What will this mean for the region?

Japan has become very tough on North Korea because of the Japanese who were abducted in the 1970s and 1980s. Russia is somewhere in the middle but tends to be softer on North Korea.

China is not likely to do anything that will precipitate the fall of the North Korean Government as if they do, they will have large numbers of refugees bringing them all sorts of problems. The Chinese will talk tough for a while but will want to avoid a sudden collapse.

That's why sanctions won't work. You can't have sanctions without the co-operation of China. They do not want all the chaos and unpredictability that a collapse will bring.

Another fear is that in the long term, it will lead to a nuclear arms race in East Asia. There is also a fear that Japan, which has great technological capacity, will develop its own nuclear weapons.

The concern is that then South Korea, Taiwan, even Vietnam would want their own nuclear weapons and this would be the nightmare scenario. Having said that, I don't think that will happen.

Both politically and culturally, the Japanese are not ready for nuclear weapons in any sense. You can't underestimate the deep aversion to nuclear weapons testing among most postwar Japanese.

What details are known about the explosion?

In the last few days, sources from North Korea talked about a mine set up with a device very deep, which is designed to contain radiation when the explosion happens.

North Korea is a small country which is densely populated - there is no desert or expansive land in which to carry out such an explosion. So the blast is going to be relatively close to human settlement. We may not know if there has been any long-term damage for a while.

What about Washington's position?

President Bush's policy with North Korea has been to not engage in any talks at all.

The policy when Bill Clinton was in power was to engage in dialogue with Pyongyang and try to bring them out by co-operating and overlooking certain policies in the hope that they can get them to play ball by killing them with kindness.

But the Bush Administration abandoned this and the North Koreans have refused to play ball.

There is now no communication between the two countries and it's been at the level of name calling and extreme antagonism for several years.

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