By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
North Korea asked the United States to fully support its joining international financial organizations during recent negotiations over a mechanism to verify the North's nuclear weapons program, a report said Monday.
Radio Free Asia, a U.S.-funded private radio station, quoted an unidentified U.S. expert on North Korean affairs as saying that Pyongyang has asked Washington to help it become a member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
In return, the communist nation promised to accept a U.S.-proposed protocol aimed at examining its nuclear programs declared in June as part of a six-party disarmament-for-aid deal reached early last year between the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia, it said.
North Korea has shown sporadic interest in joining the Washington-based IMF and World Bank, and the Manila-based ADB in a bid to save its falling economy. But it has always balked at transparency rules and other basic terms of entry for these international financial organizations.
The United States, a major shareholder in the IMF, World Bank and ADB, has played a major role in rejecting the North's applications for admission, citing the deadlock with Pyongyang's nuclear program.
Japan, another major shareholder of the key lending agencies, has objected to North Korea's membership in the international organizations due to disputes over the North's abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s.
North Korea is one of very few poor countries without links to big international lenders. It lost an estimated 10 percent of its population in a famine in the late 1990s and still suffers widespread malnutrition. Its economy scrapes by on aid and investment from neighbors China and South Korea.
Meanwhile, Sung Kim, the U.S. State Department's top Korea expert, met South Korean officials Monday to discuss the early establishment of a system to verify the North's nuclear declaration, said Moon Tae-young, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Kim met with Hwang Joon-guk, chief of the ministry's policy planning bureau on North Korea's nuclear issue, Moon said.
``During today's meeting, the two sides discussed the completion of the second-phase denuclearization process and the beginning of the third phase regarding complete nuclear dismantlement, as well as the early establishment of a verification system,'' he told reporters.
Under the so-called Feb. 13 deal, North Korea is required to give up its nuclear weapons drive in three phases in exchange for energy aid and diplomatic and security guarantees from the other parties.
The U.S. nuclear envoy arrived in Seoul Saturday after meeting Chinese officials in Beijing last week to help break a deadlock over the verification protocol that Washington wants the North to adopt before it is removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
North Korea has rejected the protocol, suggested at the last six-party talks in Beijing in July. It missed the Aug. 11 deadline to provide a way for international inspectors to verify claims about its nuclear program.
The possible removal is part of the six-party talks aimed at convincing Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program in return for aid and political concessions from the other five parties.
U.S. President George W. Bush said in June that his government would begin the process of taking the North off its terrorism blacklist. He informed Congress of his intent to remove North Korea from the list. The Congress' minimum 45-day term to approve the decision expired Aug. 11.
North Korea is listed alongside Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria as state sponsors of terrorism, meaning it faces bans on defense sales and other restrictions on trade, foreign aid and financial transactions.
North Korea was put on the list in 1998 after its agents blew up a South Korean passenger plane, killing all 115 people aboard.
Pyongyang has threatened not to implement its earlier promise to disable its nuclear facilities in Yongbyon under the six-party accord by the end of October, unless Washington de-lists it and lifts sanctions. The North also urges other six-party members to provide energy aid under the denuclearization pact by that time.
North Korea turned over a 60-page declaration in June that included details of its plutonium-production program. It also demolished a cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear plant in a symbolic move to assure the international community of its willingness to abandon its nuclear ambition.
But the declaration contained less detail on the North's alleged secret uranium enrichment program, which the Bush administration had sought. Pyongyang has yet to disclose how many nuclear weapons it has or to provide details about its alleged nuclear proliferation.