THE US's weekend move to drop North Korea from its list of sponsors of terrorism - sparking outrage from Japan, South Korea and some quarters of Washington - was the result of the negotiator Christopher Hill outmanoeuvring hardliners in a Bush Administration attempting to clean up its foreign policy legacy.

But Mike Chinoy, the former CNN chief Asia correspondent and author of Meltdown - The Inside Story Of The North Korea Nuclear Crisis, said the late shift back to diplomacy did not abrogate six years of failed and confrontational US policy that culminated in North Korea's 2006 underground nuclear test.