Money Matter Slows North Korean Nuclear Negotiations

The seemingly resolved dispute over $25 million in frozen North Korean funds today proved not quite finished, halting six-party talks on Pyongyang’s pledge to eliminate its nuclear weapons program (see GSN, March 19).

U.S. officials announced yesterday that they had approved releasing the money at the Banco Delta Asia in Macau, which had been linked to counterfeiting and other illicit North Korean financial activities.

Officials from Pyongyang today declined to join a meeting in Beijing of the lead nuclear negotiators from the nations participating in the talks, Reuters reported.  The meeting was canceled.

“According to host China, North Korea is saying that it will not take part in talks unless it confirms the funds at BDA are transferred to its account in China,” said top Japanese envoy Kenichiro Sasae.

“China urged North Korea to come forward, but North Korea did not do so.  There was no progress at all today,” he added.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill had said he hoped discussions would address moving forward with North Korea’s plan to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, along with additional denuclearization moves under the Feb. 13 agreement.

The fund transfer could occur overnight, said South Korean deputy negotiator Lim Sung-nam.  “Tomorrow, we anticipate there will be main six-way talks in the morning,” he said.

“It’s going to go well,” top North Korean envoy Kim Kye Gwan told a South Korean official.  “We’re going to have a good dream tonight” (Ueno/Kim, Reuters/Yahoo!News, March 20).

The first day of talks yesterday went well, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao.

This “creates favorable conditions for more progress on the implementation of further steps in the six-party talks process,” he said.

Without specifying a date, Liu said North Korea is ready to take the first steps in the pact — halting work at Yongbyon and allowing international nuclear inspectors back into the country, Agence France-Presse reported (Kwanwoo/Hiyama, Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, March 20).

Pyongyang  today also blasted Japan for its demand that the issue of North Korean abduction of Japanese citizens be tied into the denuclearization talks, AFP reported.

“The present ruling quarter and the right-wing forces of Japan” do not want a nuclear weapons-free Korean Peninsula, the official KCNA news agency said.

Tokyo has said it would not join other nations in providing fuel oil and other assistance to North Korea under the deal until the abduction is resolved.  It rejects Pyongyang’s claims that all the abductees have either died or been returned.

“We will stay with the same policy that we won’t fund the energy assistance without seeing progress,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told lawmakers yesterday (Kwanwoo/Hiyama, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, March 20).

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