North Korea to rejoin 6-nation nuclear talks

updated 9:34 p.m. ET Oct. 31, 2006

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Wednesday that it decided to return to international nuclear talks to resolve U.S. financial restrictions aimed at choking the regime's access to outside banks.

China announced Tuesday that the North had agreed to end a boycott of the talks after a meeting in Beijing of the top envoys from the U.S. and North Korea.

The North's Foreign Ministry said Pyongyang "decided to return to the six-party talks on the premise that the issue of lifting financial sanctions will be discussed and settled between the (North) and the U.S. within the framework of the six-party talks."

North Korea has refused since November 2005 to return to the arms talks in anger over the U.S. financial restrictions, which blacklisted a Macau bank where the regime held accounts for its alleged complicity in counterfeiting and money laundering. U.S. officials had sought to rally other countries to prevent the North from keeping bank accounts, saying all transactions involving Pyongyang were suspect.

However, on Tuesday in Beijing, the U.S. agreed to discuss the financial restrictions at the resumed nuclear talks, which also include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

The North emphasized Wednesday in the statement carried by its official Korean Central News Agency that the breakthrough on returning to six-party talks was made possible by a bilateral meeting Tuesday with the U.S. in Beijing.

The ministry also alluded to its Oct. 9 nuclear test, noting that the North "recently took a self-defensive countermeasure against the U.S. daily increasing nuclear threat and financial sanctions against it."

The agreement was struck in a day of unpublicized discussions between the senior envoys from the United States, China and North Korea at a government guesthouse in Beijing. The U.S. negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, said the six-nation negotiations could resume as early as November or December.

“We took a step today toward getting this process back on track. This process has suffered a lot in recent weeks by the actions the DPRK has made,” Hill told reporters afterward. DPRK stands for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name. The last round of the six-nation arms was held in September 2005.

The agreement is one of the first signs of easing tensions since North Korea conducted the underground detonation on Oct. 9, defying warnings from both the United States and Japan and its staunchest ally, China.

It also marks a diplomatic victory for China and the United States, which worked closely together in the wake of the test, but especially for Beijing. Though stung by Pyongyang’s test, China had counseled against punishing North Korea too harshly, weakening a U.N. resolution sanctioning Pyongyang, and suggested leaving a path for diplomacy.

Bush: ‘I want to thank the Chinese’
President Bush on Tuesday welcomed the agreement.

“I am pleased and I want to thank the Chinese,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office, after meeting with Andrew Natsios, his special envoy on Sudan.

Hill said the China-U.S. effort was “one of the very important dynamics of the past weeks.”

Both the United States and North Korea showed flexibility at Tuesday’s meeting, Hill said, with Washington agreeing to discuss the financial sanctions Washington imposed on North Korea a year ago for alleged counterfeiting and money laundering.

EPA file More than 100,000 citizens and service members of North Korea's People's Army attend a rally Oct. 20 to commemorate the nation's recent successful nuclear test in Pyongyang, North Korea.

Pyongyang, which had boycotted the negotiations for a year to protest the sanctions, did not make their lifting a condition for resuming the talks, Hill said.

At the talks, Pyongyang’s negotiator, Kim Gye Gwan, “made the point” that North Korea considered itself a nuclear power, Hill said. “I made it very clear that the United States does not accept the DPRK as a nuclear power and neither does China.”

Mixed reactions from other partners
Other partners in the talks — Japan, Russia and South Korea — had mixed reactions to the announcement.

South Korea, which like China has urged engagement with Pyongyang, and Russia were optimistic about the prospects of resuming the negotiations.

“The government hopes that the six-party talks will resume at an early date as agreed, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Choo Kyu-ho said.

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