North Korean Financial Sanctions Standoff Said Resolved

The United States is ready to approve the release of $25 million in frozen North Korean funds, opening the door for progress on Pyongyang’s pledge to eliminate its nuclear weapons program, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, March 16).

North Korea had declared it would not begin taking steps on denuclearization before the United States lifted financial sanctions.

Washington and Pyongyang agreed that money now held by Banco Delta Asia in Macau could be moved to a bank in China.  North Korea “pledged, within the framework of the six-party talks, that these funds will be used solely for the betterment of the North Korean people, including for humanitarian and educational purposes,” Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Daniel Glaser said in a statement.

North Korean officials, in Beijing ahead of the resumption of six-nation talks today, said the matter “will not be an impediment to our six-party talks,” said Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill.

They “made it very clear that they have begun their tasks for the purpose of denuclearization,” he said.

Diplomats beginning today plan to discuss details of the Feb. 13 disarmament agreement and to set up working groups on related diplomatic and security issues.  Hill said he hopes to see one panel address the matter of Pyongyang’s suspected but denied uranium enrichment program, along with its known plutonium program, the Times reported (Joseph Kahn, New York Times, March 19).

“We would like to begin to sequence events for the next phase” of negotiations, Hill said.  “We need to know the full picture” (Beck/Buckley, Reuters/Yahoo!News, March 19).

A North Korean official said Saturday that his government has “begun preparations to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear facility,” one of the initial steps in the agreement, South Korean nuclear negotiator Chun Young-woo said.

The statement from diplomat Kim Song Gi came after lead negotiator Kim Kye Gwan said the Banco Delta Asia funds must be returned before movement began, the Associated Press reported.

Pyongyang also plans to deliver its list of nuclear programs and disable the plant “as soon as the right conditions are created,” Chun said, without elaborating (Audra Ang, Associated Press I/Red Orbit, March 18).

The Yongbyon reactor as of today continued to operate, Agence France-Presse reported. 

“The five-megawatt reactor in Yongbyon is in normal operation at present, considering a constant stream of steam spotted from its cooling tower,” a senior South Korean intelligence official told Yonhap News (Agence France-Presse, March 19).

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Friday he hopes to see agency inspectors return to North Korea by mid-April, AP reported.

Allowing IAEA officials into the country for the first time since 2002 is another step on Pyongyang’s move toward disarmament.

“We still hope we’ll do it by April 13,” the 60-day deadline called for in the agreement, ElBaradei said.  “The earlier they invite us, the sooner we can go back” (William Kole, Associated Press II/Yahoo!News, March 17).

Three GOP lawmakers in the House of Representatives said they would oppose quick removal of North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism as part of the nuclear deal, AP reported Saturday.

“The expeditious removal of the D.P.R.K. from (the list) raises serious concerns over the integrity of the list,” states a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), Edward Royce (Calif.) and Donald Manzullo (Ill.).

Pyongyang should withhold support for any terrorist activities for four years and resolve remaining terrorism issues, including abductions of Japanese and South Korean citizens and U.S. residents, before coming off the list, the lawmakers said (Associated Press III/International Herald Tribune, March 17).

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