North Korea told delegates at nuclear talks on Saturday that it is preparing to shut down its main reactor, South Korea’s chief nuclear envoy said, a key step promised in a landmark disarmament pact.
The apparent progress in implementing last month’s agreement came only hours after North Korea’s lead nuclear envoy said his government would not close its main nuclear facility until all $25-million of its money frozen in a Macau bank, Banco Delta Asia (BDA), was released.
“We will not stop our nuclear activity until our funds frozen in the BDA are fully released,” Kim Kye Gwan told reporters as he arrived in Beijing for follow-up meetings on the agreement.
The fate of the frozen funds, the result of a blacklisting by United States authorities, has become a central issue in the talks.
Washington promised to resolve the bank issue as an inducement to North Korea to return to the negotiations, but its solution — an order this past week to US banks to sever ties with the Macau bank — has been criticised by China and left North Korea sending mixed signals.
At one follow-up meeting on Saturday, another North Korean diplomat, Kim Song Gi, said North Korea has “begun preparations to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear facility”, South Korean envoy Chun Yung-woo told reporters afterward.
Kim promised that North Korea will submit a list of its nuclear programmes and disable its nuclear facility “as soon as the right conditions are created”, Chun said, without explaining what the conditions were.
Under the February 13 agreement, which involves the two Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia, North Korea is to shutter the Yongbyon reactor and a plutonium processing plant and allow United Nations monitors to verify the shutdown within 60 days. In return, North Korea is to receive energy and economic assistance.
Funds issue
Washington, in a side agreement, promised to resolve the BDA funds, which US authorities alleged may have resulted from counterfeiting or money laundering.
On Saturday, a senior US Treasury Department official travelled to Macau to discuss the results of the investigation with officials there. It will be up to the government of Macau — a semi-autonomous Chinese territory — whether to release any of the funds, which have been frozen since 2005.
The Treasury Department is expected to help Macau’s regulators identify accounts connected to North Korea that are not tainted by links to alleged nuclear proliferation or counterfeiting, smuggling and other crimes.
US Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Daniel Glaser said the talks with Macau officials were “cordial and productive”.
“I think it is important to emphasise this was a Macanese action to freeze the funds, and it would be a Macanese process to determine” whether to release them, he told reporters.
Uranium programme
As part of the disarmament meetings in Beijing, US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said he will push North Korea to disclose all its nuclear programmes, including an alleged uranium-enrichment programme.
US allegations that North Korea has a secret uranium-enrichment programme brought on a nuclear crisis in 2002 that led the country to expel UN inspectors and eventually led to North Korea exploding its first nuclear device in October.
North Korea has never publicly acknowledged that it has a uranium programme, although Kim Kye Gwan indicated the North is willing to discuss the issue with Washington.
“We are willing to cooperate with the US to address the allegations,” Kim said. “We will clarify this when [the US] presents the evidence.”
Washington will also discuss benchmarks for North Korea to meet in dismantling its nuclear programmes and for phased in deliveries of heavy fuel oil as those goals are met, Hill said. — Sapa-AP
Associated Press writers Christopher Bodeen, Audra Ang and Mari Yamaguchi contributed to this report