North Korea keeps talks stuck on financial issues

 

 

Hopes for progress dim amid standoff over U.S. restrictions

 

ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

BEIJING—Talks on North Korea’s nuclear program are deadlocked without any possibility of an agreement on dismantling the communist state’s weapons, Japan’s envoy said Thursday, citing the North’s refusal to abandon its demand that the U.S. lift financial restrictions.

“The situation remains severe and there is no prospect for a breakthrough,” Kenichiro Sasae said after the fourth day of talks in Beijing. “North Korea’s claims and its position on financial issues are very firm and inflexible and that is the biggest cause of the difficulty.”

North Korea has made the U.S. financial campaign its main condition for disarming, angered by Washington’s blacklisting of a Macau bank for its complicity in North Korea’s alleged illegal financial activity, including counterfeiting and money laundering. The North agreed to end a 13-month boycott of the six-nation nuclear talks because the U.S. promised to discuss the issue.

The main U.S. negotiator acknowledged the North Korean delegation refused to address anything beyond the financial issue, apparently instructed from their superiors to resolve that before talking about nuclear weapons.

“We were hoping to make more progress than we made,” Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said Thursday evening.

While insisting the financial restrictions were a separate issue from the arms talks, he acknowledged they were a means to protect against nuclear proliferation.

“We need to protect ourselves in a variety of different ways and we need to make sure that the international financial system is not easily available to countries that are involved in nuclear weapons programs,” Mr. Hill said.