The US will transfer North Korea's frozen funds from a Macao bank to a Chinese bank in Beijing, a US official revealed in Beijing Monday prior to the restart of the six-party nuclear talks.
"The funds will be transferred to a bank in Beijing to be put to humanitarian and educational uses," US Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Daniel Glaser said.
The US and North Korean governments had reached an understanding on how to use the funds frozen at Macao-based Banco Delta Asia (BDA), according to a statement issued by Glaser.
North Korea asked for the approximately US$25 million to be released and transferred into an account held by North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank at the Bank of China in Beijing, the statement said.
North Korea has further pledged that these funds, originally deemed to have issued from money-laundering activities, will be used solely for the improvement of its population's livelihoods, including benefiting humanitarian and educational purposes, it stated.
"We believe this resolves the issue of the North Korea-related frozen funds," Glaser said.
Glaser pointed out that the disposition of the frozen assets had always been and remained a decision emanating from Macao authorities and that North Korea would need to sort any legal and technical intricacies of the arrangement directly with Macao.
Due to the bank dispute, North Korea had instituted a boycott of six-party talks that lasted 13 months from the end of 2005, until the talks resumed following Pyongyang's nuclear test last year.
Since last December, the US and North Korea have met on two occasions in Beijing to discuss this issue.
A pillar of the February 13th six-party agreement was the US's pledge to resolve the matter within 30 days.
(Xinhua News Agency March 19, 2007)
