NKorea urged to act soon on nuke programme
Saturday, 16 June 2007
SEOUL, June 15 (AFP): South Korea said Friday that North Korea would soon receive the funds it has demanded before it honours a long-delayed nuclear disarmament deal, but Japan expressed caution on whether the row was settled.
Hopes of an end to the four-month standoff rose after Macau officials said more than 20 million dollars in North Korean funds which had been frozen in Banco Delta Asia (BDA) had finally been transferred.
North Korea had refused to implement the six-nation deal reached in February until it receives the Macau funds, which were frozen in 2005 after the United States raised suspicions of money-laundering and counterfeiting.
Thursday's transfer removes the "first obstacle" to denuclearisation, said Seoul's chief nuclear negotiator Chun Yung-Woo.
"From now on, we have to focus on the implementation of the February 13 agreement," he told journalists after returning from talks in Washington.
"It should not take too much time to send the money so the only process left is for North Korea to confirm the transfer."
Denuclearisation itself is "much more difficult to achieve than the BDA issue," Chun cautioned.
The communist state insisted on an international transfer of the funds to prove it has regained access to the global banking system, after the US blacklisting of BDA scared many other banks off North Korean business.
In a complex deal, the cash was reportedly to be transferred to the New York
Federal Reserve, then to the Russian central bank and onwards to a private Russian bank where the North Koreans have an account.
Japan's Kyodo News quoted Macau authorities as saying the funds had arrived at the New York Federal Reserve.
It was unclear whether this process would solve the wider banking problem to the North's satisfaction, or when it would be completed.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso speculated that North Korea may make further demands to stall the disarmament talks, which involve China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States.
"There is no guarantee that six-way talks would immediately resume. The North Korean spokesman is saying that it's all economic sanctions" that must be lifted, Aso said in Tokyo.
"After the money transfer, it is possible that they will step up their demands."
Macau Finance Minister Francis Tam said Thursday that more than 20 million dollars from "dozens of accounts" had been remitted.
The Pyongyang-linked accounts totalled 25 million and it was not clear what would happen to the remainder. But the accounts belong to private companies doing business with the North as well as its state agencies.
Negotiators had struggled to resolve the dispute.
Few banks were willing to handle the money for fear of sullying their own reputations and falling foul of the US Patriot Act, under which the blacklist was decreed.
The North, which sparked international outrage when it tested an atom bomb last October, agreed in February to disable its nuclear programmes in return for badly needed fuel aid and diplomatic benefits.
As a first step it was to have shut down its Yongbyon reactor-which produces the raw material for bomb-making plutonium-by mid-April, but the deadline passed with no progress.
Chief US nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill, currently in Mongolia, was to travel on to China, South Korea and Japan to discuss "potential next steps" to reconvene the six-nation talks, a US State Department spokesman said.
Caption:
This DigitalGlobe satellite image from 2003 shows a nuclear reactor site in Yongbyon, North Korea. South Korea has said that North Korea would soon receive the funds it has demanded before it honours a long-delayed nuclear disarmament deal, but Japan expressed caution on whether the row was settled.
Hopes of an end to the four-month standoff rose after Macau officials said more than 20 million dollars in North Korean funds which had been frozen in Banco Delta Asia (BDA) had finally been transferred.
North Korea had refused to implement the six-nation deal reached in February until it receives the Macau funds, which were frozen in 2005 after the United States raised suspicions of money-laundering and counterfeiting.
Thursday's transfer removes the "first obstacle" to denuclearisation, said Seoul's chief nuclear negotiator Chun Yung-Woo.
"From now on, we have to focus on the implementation of the February 13 agreement," he told journalists after returning from talks in Washington.
"It should not take too much time to send the money so the only process left is for North Korea to confirm the transfer."
Denuclearisation itself is "much more difficult to achieve than the BDA issue," Chun cautioned.
The communist state insisted on an international transfer of the funds to prove it has regained access to the global banking system, after the US blacklisting of BDA scared many other banks off North Korean business.
In a complex deal, the cash was reportedly to be transferred to the New York
Federal Reserve, then to the Russian central bank and onwards to a private Russian bank where the North Koreans have an account.
Japan's Kyodo News quoted Macau authorities as saying the funds had arrived at the New York Federal Reserve.
It was unclear whether this process would solve the wider banking problem to the North's satisfaction, or when it would be completed.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso speculated that North Korea may make further demands to stall the disarmament talks, which involve China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States.
"There is no guarantee that six-way talks would immediately resume. The North Korean spokesman is saying that it's all economic sanctions" that must be lifted, Aso said in Tokyo.
"After the money transfer, it is possible that they will step up their demands."
Macau Finance Minister Francis Tam said Thursday that more than 20 million dollars from "dozens of accounts" had been remitted.
The Pyongyang-linked accounts totalled 25 million and it was not clear what would happen to the remainder. But the accounts belong to private companies doing business with the North as well as its state agencies.
Negotiators had struggled to resolve the dispute.
Few banks were willing to handle the money for fear of sullying their own reputations and falling foul of the US Patriot Act, under which the blacklist was decreed.
The North, which sparked international outrage when it tested an atom bomb last October, agreed in February to disable its nuclear programmes in return for badly needed fuel aid and diplomatic benefits.
As a first step it was to have shut down its Yongbyon reactor-which produces the raw material for bomb-making plutonium-by mid-April, but the deadline passed with no progress.
Chief US nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill, currently in Mongolia, was to travel on to China, South Korea and Japan to discuss "potential next steps" to reconvene the six-nation talks, a US State Department spokesman said.
Caption:
This DigitalGlobe satellite image from 2003 shows a nuclear reactor site in Yongbyon, North Korea. South Korea has said that North Korea would soon receive the funds it has demanded before it honours a long-delayed nuclear disarmament deal, but Japan expressed caution on whether the row was settled.