Agence France-Presse,
Hopes rose Wednesday that North Korea will finally start shutting down its nuclear programme after Pyongyang announced a long-running financial dispute which blocked progress is close to settlement.
“The statement by the North Korean foreign ministry expressed its will to implement the February 13 agreement in the most explicit and positive way that we have ever seen,” South Korea's Unification Minister Lee Jae-Joung told a forum.
Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon said he expected the dispute “to be settled in the near future” but did not elaborate.
North Korean accounts totalling 25 million dollars were frozen in a Macau bank in September 2005 at US instigation on suspicion of money laundering and counterfeiting. The dispute has blocked progress ever since on nuclear disarmament.
North Korea's foreign ministry late Tuesday promised to start shutting down atomic plants under UN supervision as soon as the funds are successfully transferred.
“Work is currently under way to transfer our funds at Banco Delta Asia (BDA) in Macau to our bank accounts at a third country,” said a spokesman quoted by official media.
“When the funds are transferred we are willing to take measures for suspending the operations at the nuclear facilities right away, according to the February 13 agreement.”
A delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency would be immediately invited and “in-depth discussions with the US” about follow-up measures would begin, the spokesman said.
A six-nation disarmament deal in September 2005 went nowhere because of the BDA dispute and last October the North tested its first atomic weapon.
In February the six parties agreed to a new disarmament deal but again the North insisted on a BDA settlement before it would honour the deal.
An April 14 deadline for the first phase of action came and went as the US and other parties tussled with technicalities of how to transfer the cash.
“Scepticism over Pyongyang's will to carry out the February deal is spreading among some participants at the six-party talks. The (Tuesday) statement is aimed at easing the doubts,” said Professor Yang Moo-Jin at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies.
But Yang told AFP North Korea had not been using the BDA issue just to play with time. “Pyongyang is not so familiar with the international financial system.”
In an attempt to move the nuclear pact forward, Washington announced in March that the accounts had been unfrozen but foreign banks had been unwilling to handle cash seen as tainted.
There was no indication in Tuesday's report of how the transfer was being made or when it would be completed. But the communist state made it clear the dispute was not just about the BDA cash.
“To make the money transfer possible freely just like before has been our demand … from the beginning,” the spokesman said.
The US Treasury's blacklisting of BDA prompted other banks in the region to cut ties with Pyongyang — effectively cutting off the North from the international banking system, even for legitimate transactions.
As a first step under the February accord the North was to shut down its Yongbyon reactor — which produces the raw material for plutonium to make weapons — in the presence of UN inspectors in exchange for 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil to be supplied by South Korea.
Under the next phase, the North should declare and disable all its nuclear programmes in return for another 950,000 tons of fuel oil or equivalent aid.
The US will then consider removing the North from its list of terrorist states and talks will begin on establishing diplomatic relations and on a permanent peace treaty for the peninsula.
