Posted on 04/03/2007 12:57:21 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Talks on North Korean banking row enter second week in China
Mon Apr 2, 6:11 PM ET
Negotiations over the release of millions of dollars claimed by Pyongyang dragged into a second week on Monday, with no sign of progress in the impasse that has held up North Korean nuclear talks.
Top US Treasury official Daniel Glaser was still in Beijing after holding days of meetings with Chinese officials on the issue last week, a US embassy spokeswoman said.
"I can confirm that he is still here. We don't know how much longer he is going to be here," spokeswoman Susan Stevenson said Monday.
South Korea's negotiator in the nuclear talks also arrived in Beijing on Monday, a South Korean report said.
Lim Sung-nam "will stay in Beijing until Tuesday or Wednesday to look at the progress of the talks to transfer North Korea's money," said an unnamed foreign ministry official quoted by Yonhap news agency.
The meetings were over how to arrange the return to North Korea of about 25 million dollars frozen in a Macau bank by US financial sanctions in 2005 due to accusations of money laundering and counterfeiting.
North Korea is demanding the return of the money before it will cooperate further on a new North Korean nuclear disarmament accord it signed in February. The United States has agreed to free up the funds, which were supposed to be transferred within a month after the February 13 nuclear deal was signed to a North Korean account with the Bank of China.
However, the state-owned lender has reportedly refused to accept the money for fear of possibly affecting its credit rating.
Glaser, the US deputy assistant Treasury secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, has been meeting with officials from China's foreign ministry, the central bank and the country's banking industry regulator, his spokeswoman said last week.
He also held at least one meeting with North Korean officials, also to try to resolve the impasse.
Both the United States and China have been tight-lipped about the progress of the talks, and Stevenson said she had no further details.
Christopher Hill, the chief US envoy to the six-nation talks that reached the nuclear accord, said in Washington at the start of Glaser's visit a week ago that he expected the banking issue to be resolved in a "couple of days".
Lesson: If you did the right thing, do not change the course.
Ping!
Richardson Plans Return To North Korea in April
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson plans to travel to North Korea for meetings with government officials from the hardline communist nation.
Richardson plans to make the trip in early April, officials familiar with the trip told The Associated Press today. They spoke on condition of anonymity because plans were still being completed.
The New Mexico governor is a frequent diplomatic traveler. He was in Sudan in January to meet with government leaders and made a trip to the Darfur region where he visited refugee camps.
~~ snip ~~
The United States and other nations have been trying to get the secretive regime of Kim Jong Il to curb its nuclear weapons program. At international disarmament talks in Beijing last month, North Korea pledged to shut down its sole operating nuclear reactor in exchange for energy aid and political concessions.
However, the country refused last week to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament talks until millions of its funds frozen at a bank were released.
Season of charlatans, suckers, and useful idiots has arrived! May they get buried in toxic Yellow Dust from China before the spring is over (Yellow Dust is in full seanson now in E. Asia.)
UNBELIEVABLE. YOU....CAN....NOT.....MAKE.....THIS....STUFF...UP!!
Sounds like a good Logan Act case!
LLS
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