KEY POINTS:
SEOUL - North Korea said it could start shutting down its nuclear reactor, now that a dispute over frozen bank funds has been settled, but Pyongyang will likely miss a Saturday deadline on the disarmament deal, according to NBC news.
North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan made
the pledge during a dinner with a US delegation visiting Pyongyang led by New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, NBC quoted members of his team as saying.
Kim said the reclusive state would also allow United Nations nuclear inspectors, expelled in 2002, back into the country within a month, they said.
The United States said on Tuesday that Macau authorities had unblocked about $25 million in frozen North Korean funds at Banco Delta Asia, urging Pyongyang to now start shutting the Yongbyon nuclear plant by a weekend deadline.
Under an international deal agreed on February 13, North Korea had 60 days until this Saturday to shut down the reactor, which supplies it with weapons-grade plutonium, as a first step toward ending its nuclear weapons programme.
But the impoverished state, which would receive massive energy aid in return, wants the funds frozen since 2005 in the Macau bank released first.
"I don't know what time the bank opens today. I expect to see 52 people standing in line," US chief negotiator with North Korea, Christopher Hill, told reporters in Soeul.
He said he considered the bank issue to be resolved.
"We think now it is really an important time to get on with the ever urgent task of denuclearisation, and particularly get on with the implementation of the February agreement," Hill said. "So I would hope this would happen in a matter of days..
The apparent breakthrough comes as several key players in the North Korea issue visited Seoul, including Chinese premier Wen Jiabao.
China is the closest isolated North Korea has to an ally, but relations were strained after Pyongyang defied the international community last October with its first nuclear test.
South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said in talks with Wen and his Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing they had welcomed the US move to unblock North Korean bank accounts.
"The door to resolving the problem is now open in the way the North wanted, so the North must take positive steps and go beyond that so that we can implement the February 13 agreement," Song said.
The financial dispute has dogged diplomacy on North Korea since September 2005, when Pyongyang agreed in talks with the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States to abandon its nuclear ambitions in exchange for aid and security guarantees.
Washington accused the Macau bank of being involved in money laundering.
Bankers say the freeze has made it extremely difficult for North Korea, which anyway faces international sanctions over last year's missile and nuclear tests, to use the international banking system.
Angry the money had not been released at the time, North Korean negotiators walked out of the last round of six-party talks in March.
Hill is scheduled to discuss the nuclear issue in Beijing on Thursday and Friday. The State Department said members of the six-party talks may consult over the weekend about whether the deadline had been met but said no meeting was scheduled.
Hill is also expected to meet in Seoul later in the day with New Mexico Gov. Richardson, who crossed the heavily militarised border dividing the two Koreas earlier in the day with the remains of six US soldiers killed during the Korean War.
The two Koreas are still technically at war because the 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce and not a peace agreement.
- REUTERS
