NKorea denuclearisation on track, US envoy says

Beijing, Mar 18: North Korea is on track to fulfil its side of a breakthrough disarmament accord by shutting down its main atomic facility next month, the US envoy to six-party talks on the North's nuclear programme said today.

Christopher Hill said he was confident that a new round of the talks opening tomorrow could move past a spat over North Korea's frozen bank accounts and concentrate on pushing forward the February 13 deal.

Under the terms of the accord reached at the talks grouping the two Koreas, the United States, host China, Japan and Russia, North Korea agreed to shut its Yongbyon reactor and readmit International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors within 60 days.

''I think we are on schedule for the shutdown of the facilities and monitoring by the IAEA,'' US chief negotiator Christopher Hill told reporters.

Hill said the North Koreans now had a better understanding of the US position on Macau's Banco Delta Asia (BDA), which the US Treasury Department accused of harbouring illegal North Korean earnings.

''I think we have gotten past the BDA issue and that it will not be an impediment to the six-party process,'' he said.

The Treasury on Wednesday formally banned US banks from doing business with BDA, ending its inquiry and opening the way for Macau to free North Korean accounts found to be above board.

Hill said he expected an announcement ''very soon'' on the fate of some 24 million dollars in frozen North Korean accounts, and China's Xinhua news agency quoted Chinese State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan as saying North Korea and the United States had worked out a resolution.

But other delegates said the issue could remain thorny.

''North Korea insisted that the United States had not done what it should on BDA,'' said a Japanese diplomat, who attended working group talks today.

''North Korea and the other five parties were so far apart that no concrete achievement has been made on the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,'' the diplomat said.

Arriving in Beijing yesterday, the North Korean chief envoy Kim Kye-gwan said his country, which stunned the world by conducting its first nuclear test last October, would not shut Yongbyon until the accounts were unfrozen.

Hill was to talk with the US Treasury's deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, Daniel Glaser, late today, after a trip by Glaser to Macau.

HIGHLY ENRICHED URANIUM

Hill gave working group meetings on denuclearisation over the weekend a ''positive assessment'' and said the six-party talks would discuss progress in all five of the working groups established under the February 13 agreement.

''I think everyone was positive about the fact that Mr ElBaradei was able to visit and the DPRK spokesman also made very clear that they have begun their tasks for the purpose of denuclearisation,'' Hill said referring to the IAEA chief.

But sensitive issues remain, including that of highly enriched uranium, which Hill said the six countries would set up a committee to discuss.

US allegations about the programme in 2002 caused a previous nuclear agreement to unravel.

Since reaching the February deal, the United States has acknowledged gaps in its intelligence about whether the North had the technology and material needed to produce highly enriched uranium for weapons.

Underscoring the deep distrust between the United States and North Korea, the North's state-run Rodong Sinmun paper hit out at planned military exercises between Washington and Seoul, saying they were aimed at poisoning the atmosphere of the talks.

''The DPRK is ready for both war and talks,'' it said in a commentary, refering to the North's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

REUTERS

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