NKorea envoy demands end to sanctions: Yonhap

Seoul, Nov 29: North Korea wants the United States to free its overseas bank accounts and for countries to drop sanctions imposed after Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon, South Korea's Yonhap news agency today quoted its envoy as saying.

North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Kye-gwan made the demands in meetings yesterday with envoys from other countries in six-way talks on ending the North's nuclear weapons programmes, Yonhap said, citing a source in Beijing familiar with the talks.

According to the unnamed source, Kim said these were preconditions for the impoverished state to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme.

North Korea agreed to return to the talks, which also involve South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States and which Pyongyang has boycotted for a year, after its October.

9 nuclear test triggered UN-backed sanctions.

But North Korea had also said it would be unthinkable for it to return to talks until the US ended a crackdown on firms suspected of aiding Pyongyang in illicit activities, which has hard hit the communist state's overseas finances.

REUTERS

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