The provision also means that it will be years before inspectors can resolve the question of how much weapons-grade plutonium the North has already produced and perhaps converted into a primitive nuclear weapon. Some of Mr. Clinton's defense and intelligence aides said today that they had hoped North Korea would be forced to surrender its nuclear fuel under a much more rapid timetable. But they said that this goal could not be accomplished, and that the agreement reached this week was better than a continuing confrontation.

In the view of the Administration's experts, North Korea clearly did not want to abandon its largest national project until large-scale aid began to flow in. Over the years, the North has come to view the nuclear program as its only true defense against what it sees as hostile neighbors: South Korea, Japan and American forces in the Pacific.

But Mr. Gallucci insisted to reporters today that the agreement "does not rely on trust."

He said that the Government in Pyongyang would not receive any nuclear-sensitive materials for the new reactors until the International Atomic Energy Agency was able to conduct full inspections of nuclear sites, including two sites that the Central Intelligence Agency believes will help unravel the mystery of whether the North already possesses one or more nuclear weapons.

The accord struck in Geneva gave the President a chance to proclaim a major foreign policy success just weeks before the midterm election. But Asian diplomats pointed out today that it also placed the United States in the odd position of bolstering the political capital of a man it has regularly denounced as a terrorist, a supplier of missile technology to Iran and a dictator: Kim Jong Il.

Mr. Kim is expected to take control of the country formally later this month, succeeding his late father, Kim Il Sung. Little is known about Kim Jong Il, but American, Japanese and South Korean intelligence officials have described him in the past as the chief proponent for the past decade of the North's secret nuclear weapons program.

Japan and South Korea endorsed the agreement today, but have not yet said what share they will take in the new energy consortium.

American officials said that after some initial balking, Seoul had agreed to pay somewhat more than 50 percent of the cost of building the reactors -- the design of which will be based on a nuclear plant in Ulchin, South Korea -- and that Japan would probably pay 30 percent or more.