North Korea said on Friday it may be ready to move in a stand-off over frozen assets it insists be unblocked before shutting down its nuclear reactor, one day before the first deadline of an atomic disarmament deal.
Under an international agreement struck in February, the secretive state has until Saturday to start shutting down its Soviet-era reactor and source of its weapons-grade plutonium.
Washington has said authorities in Macau have unblocked about $25-million of North Korean funds at Banco Delta Asia (BDA), which was frozen for about 18 months due to suspected links to illicit activities, and Pyongyang can now pick up the money.
”A DPRK [North Korea] financial institution concerned will confirm soon whether the measure is valid,” the North’s KCNA news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesperson as saying.
Chief United States negotiator Chris Hill, who arrived in Beijing from Seoul on Friday, said he could not wait for North Korea forever.
”I don’t want to put a date or an hour, but another month is not in my constitution,” he told reporters after meeting Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister He Yafei. ”Certainly we’re not indifferent to missing a deadline.”
The US considers the frozen-fund issue resolved and now it is time for Pyongyang to meet its obligations. ”Frankly there’s no reason why the DPRK can’t get on to this task of denuclearisation,” said Hill, who will meet his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei, on Saturday.
But Hill said he does not expect to meet North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye-gwan, while in Beijing.
”I’m here, I’m obviously available, but I don’t think my North Korean counterpart is going to be here,” Hill said, adding he expects to return to Washington on Sunday.
North Korean officials told a US delegation visiting Pyongyang earlier this week it could move, within a day of receiving the funds, to invite international nuclear inspectors back into the country, who would oversee the shutdown.
The return of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, expelled in 2002, is part of the deal reached among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the US aimed at ending Pyongyang’s nuclear arms programmes in return for aid and better diplomatic standing.
At separate inter-Korea Red Cross talks, North Korea rejected the South’s call to help search for prisoners from the Korean War and civilians believed to have been abducted by the North since then.
At meetings that closed early on Friday in North Korea, Red Cross officials agreed to exchanges of video messages between family members who were separated on either side of the Korean border. — Reuters