North Korea's nuclear activities have held most diplomatic attention this year. Israel is generally regarded as having nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Experts say it may have produced as many as 200 nuclear weapons at its Dimona plant. Iran, like North Korea a signatory of the NPT, is widely suspected by military experts of embarking on a weapons programme. Iraq's nuclear programme has been dismantled after its defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.
Western experts say the country had been about two or three years away from producing a crude bomb.
It says it made six nuclear warheads between 1980 and 1990, when its apartheid regime faced a hostile international community, and dismantled them between 1990 and 1991.