The cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear complex near Pyongyang, North Korea, is shown in this 2007 photo. North Korea prepared to destroy the most visible symbol of its nuclear weapons program today, blowing up the cooling tower at its main reactor complex as a sign of its commitment to stop making plutonium for atomic bombs.

Kyoto, Japan ? President Bush moved Thursday to drop North Korea from a list of countries that sponsor terrorism and lift some trading sanctions, after the isolated totalitarian state turned over a long-delayed report that includes details of plutonium production in its nuclear program.

Nearly two years after North Korea stunned the world by detonating a small nuclear device, Bush said the declaration marked the start of an “action for action” process meant to end with full dismantling of the highly militarized country’s nuclear facilities and nuclear weapons.

Bush took office with an uncompromising approach to North Korea, designating it part of an “axis of evil.” Later the administration moved toward engagement, sometimes looking the other way when the North faltered on its pledges. The communist state was six months late filing the report and omitted much of the information originally demanded, but U.S. officials greeted it Thursday as a significant step forward, while stressing that the job is just beginning.

“The United States has no illusions about the regime in Pyongyang,” the North’s capital, Bush said in a Rose Garden statement. The United States will continue to demand full verification that the nuclear program has been completely shut down. “We remain deeply concerned about North Korea’s human rights abuses … nuclear testing and proliferation, ballistic missile programs and the threat it continues to pose,” he said.

The disarmament process has been tediously negotiated in six-country talks, with the North promising to give up its nuclear program in steps in return for aid and the end of sanctions. A highly photogenic next step is expected this afternoon, when the North’s government has said it will blow up the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear plant.

Over the past nine months, technicians – often working under the eye of U.S. experts – have substantially disabled that facility, North Korea’s major reactor. International television networks have been invited to document a demolition that U.S. officials say will both symbolize abandoned nuclear aspirations and make any future restarting of the plant more difficult.

The 60-page declaration, handed over to Chinese officials in Beijing, reports on three separate “campaigns” of plutonium production from the early 1990s to 2005, according to a senior State Department official.