Envoys to North Korean nuclear talks upbeat on resolving funds dispute

BEIJING – The top American nuclear envoy said Sunday that he believed North Korea and the U.S. had “gotten past” a dispute over $25 million in frozen North Korean funds, and the communist nation was moving toward nuclear disarmament.\nChristopher Hill, the American envoy, said he met with North Korean representatives on Saturday and Sunday to explain the U.S. position on the funds held in Macau’s Banco Delta Asia bank, and was hopeful that the issue had been resolved.\nHe had yet to meet with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye Gwan. Kim arrived Saturday but did not participate in meetings leading up to a formal resumption of six-party nuclear talks on Monday.\nThe talks are meant to assess progress in implementing a Feb. 13 disarmament agreement. The deal gave North Korea 60 days to shut down both its main reactor and a plutonium processing plant, allowing 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.\nWashington also promised to settle the frozen funds issue as an inducement for North Korea to disarm. The funds, some of which U.S. authorities suspect may be linked to counterfeiting or money laundering by cash-starved North Korea, had become a key issue in the talks leading up to the deal.\nKim, the North Korean envoy, told reporters upon his arrival in Beijing on Saturday that North Korea “will not stop its nuclear activity” until the entire $25 million in the frozen accounts is released.\nHill told reporters late Sunday that, “I think we have gotten past the BDA issue and that will not be an impediment to our six-party process.”\nHill said the North Korean officials he spoke with “made it very clear that they have begun their tasks for the purpose of denuclearization.”\nDelegates from the six countries involved in the talks – China, the two Koreas, Russia, Japan and the United States – met Sunday.\nJapan’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.\nSouth Korean envoy Chun Yung-woo said 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.”\nChinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan told a group of visiting Japanese lawmakers 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.\nU.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 detonating its first nuclear device last year.\nU.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.