Negotiators are moving towards settlement of a banking dispute blocking North Korea's nuclear disarmament but cannot say when it will be resolved, South Korea's foreign minister said Wednesday. "The process of resolving technical problems is moving toward the direction we are aiming at, but its pace is not as fast as we had hoped," Song Min-Soon told reporters.
"I think it is too early to say when it will be resolved." Song said he and his US counterpart Condoleezza Rice agreed to continue working to settle the issue soon. "I just talked to Secretary of State Rice on the phone and discussed various efforts and ways to speed up the resolution of the issue," he said.
Song's comments were more cautious than those of chief US nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill, who said in Bangkok Tuesday he is hopeful of a solution very soon.
North Korea has promised to start shutting down its nuclear reactor in exchange for fuel oil under an accord reached at six-nation talks in February. But Pyongyang, which carried out its first nuclear test last October, made progress conditional on settlement of the dispute over its accounts in a Macau bank.
The accounts totalling 25 million dollars were frozen in Banco Delta Asia in 2005 under US money-laundering and counterfeiting sanctions. The United States lifted the restrictions on the accounts in March. But the North has had problems arranging a transfer via a foreign bank since banks are unwilling to touch apparently tainted money. The US-based Wachovia bank said last week it was considering a State Department request to help process the transfer.