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Koreas to discuss heavy fuel oil aid to North Korea
By Sohn Suk-joo
SEOUL, June 29 (Yonhap) -- Officials from South and North Korea are to meet Friday to discuss providing 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil to the North in return for Pyongyang's shutdown of a nuclear reactor that produces weapons-grade plutonium, officials said.
"We will prepare to sign a contract to provide heavy fuel oil based on the outcome of working-level talks. It is too early to say when, but it will take at least three weeks to start the shipments," a Unification Ministry official said, asking to remain anonymous.
The agenda at the two-day talks in the North Korean border city of Kaesong will be how to deliver heavy fuel oil as well as how much to ship to each North Korean candidate port, the official said.
Han Chung-hee, vice chief of the planning department on North Korea's nuclear issue at the Foreign Ministry, will lead a four-member delegation at the talks.
Under a six-party agreement signed in February, North Korea promised to shut down its nuclear facilities and eventually dismantle them in exchange for energy aid and other benefits.
North Korea is to receive initial aid equal to 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil for shutting down and sealing its main nuclear reactor and related facilities at Yongbyon, about 90 kilometers north of Pyongyang, within 60 days. International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are to determine whether the North carries out these steps properly.
North Korea can receive up to another 950,000 tons in heavy fuel oil or the equivalent in aid if it disables the reactor irreversibly and declares all its nuclear programs to the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
The cost of the aid is to be shouldered equally by the other nations in the six-party talks. But Japan has vowed not to provide any assistance to the North until the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang decades ago is resolved.
North Korea made retrieval of its frozen funds in a Macau bank a condition of the implementation of the nuclear disarmament deal with the five countries. The U.S. in March unblocked the money but its transfer to North Korea was delayed due to U.S. financial sanctions.
In 2005, the U.S. blacklisted Banco Delta Asia (BDA), a small bank in the Chinese-controlled territory of Macau, as a money-laundering concern. That caused about US$25 million in North Korean funds to be frozen at the bank.
The issue was resolved only after the U.S. and Russian central banks intervened. No commercial banks came forward to help transfer the money which was largely believed to be "tainted."
The North Korean money, which had been sent to the Russian central bank from the U.S. Federal Reserve in New York, was transferred last Saturday to a bank in Russia's Far East where North Korea has an account.
ssj@yna.co.kr
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