Kim Jong-il, North Korea's idiosyncratic leader, may be dispensing Hennessy cognac and Cartier watches to his cronies for a little while longer, thanks to a 300-year-old territorial dispute between the UK and Spain.

The precise status of Gibraltar, a hunk of British-owned rock at the mouth of the Mediterranean, has caused a new row between London and Madrid that is delaying a European Union ban on luxury goods sales to Pyongyang.