How to get a handle on the axis

摘要

This hasn't been the finest week for the effort to curb the nuclear ambitions of the two states which, along with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, were once consigned by George Bush to an "axis of evil". North Korea, which shocked the world with a nuclear-bomb test last October, looks like missing an April 14th deadline-agreed two months ago in six-party talks with America, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia-to shut down and seal its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, and the related facilities for extracting bomb-useable plu-tonium from its fuel rods.