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South Korean Official Raps North on Financial Crimes
South Korean Ambassador to the United States Lee Tae-sik said yesterday that North Korea should not use U.S. financial regulatory actions as an excuse to stall nuclear talks, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Feb. 7). “Pyongyang should make their hands clean on this matter by unequivocally turning away from such illicit behavior,” he said during a speech in Washington. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. envoy to the stalled six-nation nuclear negotiations, yesterday also called upon North Korea to return to the talks (Foster Klug, Associated Press, Feb. 8). Meanwhile, Japan and North Korea today ended five days of bilateral talks without an agreement on setting up diplomatic relations, AP reported. The two sides “discovered that there’s a big difference of opinion,” according to Koichi Haraguchi, who led the Japanese delegation in Beijing. The envoys discussed Pyongyang’s Cold War-era abductions of Japanese citizens, its nuclear and missile programs, and its demand that Tokyo pay reparations for Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, AP reported. Song Il Ho, Pyongyang’s top envoy to the talks, reiterated North Korea’s position that it would return to nuclear talks only if the United States ends its crackdown on the country’s alleged financial crimes. “We are ready to return to talks under one condition, and that is that the United States lift its sanctions,” Song said. “The United States won’t hear this from us. But if Japan tells the United States, if a friend tells a friend, they might listen” (Audra Ang, Associated Press/phillyBurbs.com, Feb. 8).
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