Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the new U.S. intelligence report on Tehran's nuclear program is "a victory" for the Iranian nation against world powers.

A new US intelligence report says Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and it remains on hold, contradicting the Bush administration's earlier assertion that Tehran was intent on developing a bomb.

Iran's president demanded on Friday that Western nations apologize to Iran for suspecting it was conducting a covert nuclear weapons program, put in doubt by a recent UN watchdog report.

The U.S. envoy in charge of seeking a diplomatic end to North Korea's nuclear weapons programs says Pyongyang has much more to do before punitive United Nations sanctions are lifted. As a U.S. team begins the process of disabling the North's main nuclear complex, the governments involved in the nuclear negotiations are now preparing to receive a promised list of Pyongyang's nuclear programs and facilities.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin says he supports Iran's pursuit of nuclear energy. VOA White House Correspondent Scott Stearns reports, President Bush says Iran is secretly developing a nuclear weapons program.

It has been a year since North Korea alarmed the world by demonstrating its nuclear weapons capability with an underground test. In the months since, multinational diplomacy dealing with North Korea's nuclear weapons picked up urgency - and has made progress.

The United States is hosting a high-level diplomatic meeting in Washington Friday to discuss the possibility of imposing new U.N. sanctions against Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program.

North Korea has denied allegations that it may be helping Syria to develop a nuclear-weapons facility. North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that suspicions raised by Washington and U.S. media reports are part of an "unskillful conspiracy."

A team of nuclear experts from the United States, China and Russia will go to North Korea next week to survey nuclear facilities that would be disabled if Pyongyang eventually agrees to abandon its nuclear weapons programs.

Senior U.S. and North Korean diplomats meet next Saturday and Sunday in Geneva for talks on dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program and on the prospect of normalized relations. The bilateral working group meeting is part of the broader six-party disarmament process.

Six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear disarmament ended Friday without setting a deadline for the next steps in preventing the North from developing nuclear weapons, but participants reaffirmed their commitment to push forward with the process.

Russia's envoy to the current negotiations on North Korea's nuclear program in Beijing said Pyongyang promised to declare and deactivate all its nuclear facilities as another step toward complete nuclear disarmament.