North Korea loses at least $20-million each week it stays away from multilateral talks aimed at ending its nuclear weapons drive, a top United States negotiator said on Tuesday.
North Korea stood to gain that amount of money in energy aid alone in return for abandoning its nuclear weapons under an agreement reached by the negotiating parties, said Christopher Hill, the Assistant Secretary of State who headed the US team to the stalled six-nation talks.
”So for every four weeks they delay, they lose $80-million, and you can do the math from here,” Hill said when commenting on North Korea’s boycott of the talks since November last year.
North Korea had shunned the talks — also involving the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia — to protest US financial sanctions imposed over allegations that Pyongyang was counterfeiting US dollars and laundering money through a bank in Macau.
The US Treasury Department, which imposed the sanctions last September, linked Macau’s Banco Delta Asia to North Korea’s alleged illicit activities and froze $20-million in bank funds supposed to go to the North.
North Korea rejected the US claims and wanted the freeze lifted.
Hill, speaking at a Washington-based forum, said the North Koreans ”should not mortgage their entire future because of $20-million in a Macao bank”.
Based on US and South Korean estimates, North Korea would receive $20-million a week in energy aid alone under a September accord at the six-party talks in which Pyongyang agreed in principle to abandon its nuclear weapons drive in return for diplomatic, security and energy aid guarantees.
”So the question is why are they standing aside, losing so much money from only the energy agreement … they have to answer that question,” Hill said.
”I can’t answer that except to say that it does make me concerned about their commitment to implement the six-party agreement,” he added.
The US diplomat defended the sanctions, saying the United States could not hold any direct talks with North Korea until the Stalinist state ended its boycott of the six-party nuclear meeting.
”We are not prepared to try to sit outside the six-party process and allow DPRK [Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea] to boycott the process and look for favours in order to bring them back.
”For them to stay out and expect something from the other participants in order to join is to say that the six-party process is in everyone’s interest except the DPRK.
”In fact, they have more than one sixth of the interest to come back to the process,” Hill said. – AFP
