Seoul May Use Aid for Denuclearization of NK

Foreign Minister Song Min-soon Thursday hinted at the possibility of providing large amounts of food aid to North Korea even before the communist nation honors its pledge to denuclearize, Yonhap News Agency reported.

"This issue could move at a bit faster rate," the minister said at a breakfast meeting of the Korean-American Association at a Seoul hotel.

"(The food shipments) do not need to be adjusted to the exact date (of the reactor shutdown) and the timing of shipping the rice aid is not an issue that requires consultation with other countries," Song added.

The minister said the country's food assistance to the North does not need to be linked to progress in North Korea's denuclearization, but its early provision could help bring about

what he called a "positive cycle" between inter-Korean relations and the denuclearization process.

Seoul had promised to provide 400,000 tons of rice to the North last year, then again this year, but its shipments were suspended amid the North's refusal to implement the February agreement in which it promised to shut down and seal its key nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, over a banking issue that involved the North's $25 million previously frozen in a Macau bank.

The funds at Macau's Banco Delta Asia have been transferred to a North Korean account in a Russian bank, Christopher Hill, Washington's chief negotiator in the six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions, said Wednesday, adding that this finally closes the case.

Pyongyang has yet to confirm the release of the funds but invited a negotiation team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week, acknowledging the banking issue has reached the "final phase" of resolution.

The IAEA negotiators are expected to arrive in Pyongyang early next week to arrange a later trip by IAEA inspectors to verify the shutdown of the Yongbyon complex.

Washington is hoping to go through the shutdown phase quickly and move on to the next phase of disabling the North's nuclear facilities and programs, while Pyongyang is showing little interest in making up for time lost due to the banking issue.

"Hopefully we can move through this phase of shutdown and sealing and monitoring in a relatively rapid fashion and move on to the disablement," Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said in Washington Thursday.

Hill has said he wants the next round of the nuclear disarmament talks to start immediately after the 4th of July."

However, he acknowledged that a new round before the complete shutdown of the Yeongbyeon reactor would be meaningless.

"We don't want to have...a six-party meeting when we're again discussing the shutdown of the Yeongbyeon facility," Hill told reporters in Tokyo on Thursday.

An unidentified North Korean diplomatic source told Russia's Interfax news agency Monday that Pyongyang would be able to shut down the Yongbyon complex "in the second half of July."

While traveling to South Korea on Tuesday, the top U.S. nuclear envoy said the task should take only "weeks, not months."

The South Korean foreign minister also warned against any attempts by North Korea to delay or dodge its denuclearization commitments, saying it has a lot to lose.

"Korea and the United States believe that we are fully capable of showing North Korea that it has more to lose than to gain from possessing nuclear weapons," Song said at the breakfast meeting.

The nuclear disarmament talks involve the two Koreas, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia.