BEIJING - Envoys worked Sunday to negotiate a schedule for dismantling North Korea's nuclear programs, amid efforts to resolve the thorny issue of U.S. financial sanctions that have frozen some $25 million in North Korean funds.
Christopher Hill, the American envoy, said he met with representatives from the North Korea delegation over the weekend to explain the U.S. position on the funds in Macau's Banco Delta Asia bank and said he was hopeful that the issue had been resolved.
However, he had yet to meet with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye Gwan, who arrived Saturday but did not participate in preparatory meetings ahead of a formal resumption of six-party nuclear talks on Monday.
The talks are meant to assess progress since a Feb. 13 disarmament agreement was reached giving North Korea 60 days to shut its main reactor and a plutonium processing plant and allow U.N. monitors to verify the shutdown. In return, North Korea is to receive energy and economic assistance and a start toward normalizing relations with the U.S. and Japan.
Hill told reporters Sunday the issue of the frozen funds "will not be an impediment to our six-party process."
Hill said the North Korean officials he spoke with "made it very clear that they have begun their tasks for the purpose of denuclearization."
Kim, the North Korean envoy, said Saturday that North Korea "will not stop its nuclear activity" until the entire $25 million in the frozen accounts is released.
South Korean envoy Chun Yung-woo echoed Hill's optimism, saying Sunday that he expected the funds issue to be resolved "within a short period of time in a way that will not be an obstacle to the progress of the six-party talks."
Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan told a group of visiting Japanese lawmakers Sunday that the U.S. and North Korea had already resolved the dispute, Hidenao Nakagawa, secretary-general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, told reporters. Nakagawa was in Beijing to meet China's leaders.
Delegates from the six countries involved in the talks -- China, the two Koreas, Russia, Japan and the United States -- met Sunday to negotiate the targets necessary to meet the next April 14 deadline.
Japan's representative to the talks, Akio Suda, said North Korean delegates at the meeting said "they are prepared to do what they are supposed to do on the condition that the five other members do what they are required to do," without giving details.
Suda said "most representatives" stressed the need to focus efforts on closing the North's main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, getting the U.N. to verify the shutdown and getting clarification of the North's alleged separate uranium enrichment program.
U.S. allegations in 2002 that North Korea has a secret uranium enrichment program prompted the North to expel U.N. inspectors and eventually led to North Korea exploding its first nuclear device in October last year.
Under the agreement, North Korea eventually is to receive assistance worth 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil if it fully discloses and dismantles all nuclear programs.
The U.S. promise to resolve the frozen funds, some of which U.S. authorities suspect may be linked to counterfeiting or money laundering, had become a key issue in the talks.
Washington promised to settle the issue as an inducement to North Korea to disarm. But its solution announced last week -- an order to U.S. banks to sever ties with the Macau -- has been criticized by China and North Korea.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Daniel Glaser arrived in Beijing on Sunday following meetings in Macau to discuss the issue with government officials, who have the authority to release the funds. Macau is a semiautonomous Chinese territory that maintains its own legal and financial systems.
The Treasury Department is expected to help Macau bank regulators identify accounts connected to North Korea that are not tainted by alleged links to nuclear proliferation or other crimes, possibly resulting in the release of about $20 million, one U.S. official has said on condition of anonymity in accordance with policy.
