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US, N Korea try to sort out financial issues
Six nations sit down to try and talk things out.
BY OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
December 21, 2006
With the Pyongyang irritation persisting, the United States has begun parleys with North Korea’s financial sector experts following the alleged bid by the American administration to isolate the communist nation from the international banking system.
This banking issue, significantly, is today the biggest hurdle in the negotiations over Pyongyang's nuclear programme. North Korea had, for more than a year, refused to attend negotiations with the US as a protest against the Washington move on blacklisting a Macau bank where Pyongyang had deposited $24 million.
Reports said that the US believed that the bank was complicit in the North's counterfeiting of $100 notes and money laundering to sell weapons of mass destruction. America also went ahead and called upon the international community to put a bar on North Korean accounts. The reason, according to the US, is that North Korea’s transactions are all suspect.
It is in this backdrop the current negotiations have begun. The six nations involved in the nuclear negotiations, viz, the Koreas, Russia, China, Japan and the US sat down for almost two hours on Tuesday morning to talk. The logistics of implementing a pledge made by North Korea in September last year to suspend its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for security guarantees and economic aid was the focus of the talks.
According to reports, North Korea has enough radioactive material to make about a half-dozen atomic bombs, and its main nuclear reactor remains in operation to create more weapons-grade plutonium. Meanwhile, Pyongyang has insisted it be treated as a full-fledged nuclear power. This meant the arms reductions should be mutual. However, the US has said time was running out for Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear arsenal and threatened more sanctions.
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