WASHINGTON - North Korea faced no outcry on Monday when it failed to account for its nuclear programs by an agreed year-end deadline, but Pyongyang might not be able to procrastinate for long in 2008.
North Korea was widely expected to miss the December 31 target date to produce a complete declaration of its nuclear arms programs -- facilities, weapons and fissile material -- under a disarmament-for-aid deal signed 10 months earlier.
The secretive state -- which since the 1980s has broken or ignored nuclear-related understandings with the Soviet Union, South Korea, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United States -- received only the mildest of rebukes.
U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey called the lapsed deadline unfortunate but said the United States and partners China, Japan, Russia and South Korea would keep working with North Korea.
"We've seen these kinds of delays or other things occur in the process as we move along, and in some ways I think you have expect those things," he said.
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said, "We think it's possible for the North Koreans to provide a full and complete declaration and we hope they will do that as soon as possible."
Experts said they expected North Korea to be cut some slack after a year in which the goalposts were moved several times to keep diplomacy on track. The North had already crossed a major line when it tested a nuclear bomb in October 2006.
The Americans "were always ready, knowing North Korea, to roll for a month or two, but the real questions come after that. At what point do they make a judgment on the seriousness of North Korea about this whole endeavor?" asked Derek Mitchell of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The declaration deadline follows relatively smooth cooperation in late 2007 with North Korea in disabling its aging Yongbyon nuclear complex, which is also required under the nuclear deal.
NEW LEVERAGE IN 2008?
