In a double blow, the defiant Stalinist state has seen US foes Iran and Libya buckle to international pressure to allow scrutiny of their atomic weapons programs.

As of early Tuesday Pyongyang time, there had been no response from an unusually reticent official North Korean news agency to Colonel Moamer Kadhafi's move.

Libya's capitulation, announced here on Friday, was sure to evoke serious evaluation in the North Korean capital, analysts said.

But some argued that the Bush administration had as much to learn as North Korea from the Libyan climb-down, as it seeks to break the deadlock with Pyongyang that pushed planned six-nation crisis talks back from last week to next year.

President George W. Bush, revelling in another foreign policy triumph days after the capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, said Libya's move signalled that states bent on developing weapons of mass destruction were heading into a blind alley.

"Leaders who abandon the pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them, will find an open path to better relations with the United States and other free nations," Bush said on Friday.

Libya's decision is a victory for a hardline, no tolerance policy, Bush supporters claim.

"I hope they (North Korea) are learning an important lesson from this," said Balbina Hwang, a Korea analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.

"North Korea should learn what Libya has ... Kadhafi saw what the future was, that if he did not relent and cooperate with the international community, life was going to be very difficult."

Some analysts argue though that while a victory for US and British diplomacy, Libya's decision was not wholly comparable to North Korea, which is far further along the nuclear road.

"The Libyan example is one we should tout to the North Koreans, it is one that we should follow in trying to negotiate an end to their nuclear programs," said Jon Wolfstahl of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"But (Iran and Libya) are not nearly as dangerous to US interests as North Korea -- they did not possess nuclear weapons, North Korea does, so it is a different kettle of fish."

The Bush administration has refused to countenance direct one-on-one talks with Pyongyang, insisting on drawing in Russia, Japan, South Korea and China into the dialogue.

The result has been weeks of talks about talks -- with little sign of progress.

"We have not been willing to provide (North Korea) with any vision of why their world would be better without weapons of mass destruction," Wolfstahl said.

The State Department said on Monday that US trade, investment and travel sanctions against Libya "behavior changes."

Similar sanctions are in place on North Korea but there is currently no prospect of them being lifted.

Bush administration officials counter they were ready to offer Pyongyang "a bold approach" of unspecified political and economic boons for a decision to renounce nuclear production.

But the offer stalled after US intelligence services uncovered a bid by Pyongyang to frame a nuclear weapons program based on enriched uranium, with which US envoy James Kelly confronted North Korean negotiators in October 2002.

"The lesson of Libya (is) if you offer them incentives or at least a positive vision for abandoning these programs, then you can make progress," Wolfstahl said.

Libya's bombshell move followed years of patient, secretive diplomacy -- in stark contrast to the public and bruising rhetoric that has punctuated the US-North Korea standoff.

"I wish the (North Korea) negotiations were more quiet and under the radar," Hwang said, but claimed that Pyongyang's negotiating strategy was based on "showmanship" and portraying the crisis as a standoff between itself and Washington.

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