April 14, 2007	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 25, 1428

PYONGYANG, April 13: North Korea promised on Friday to honour a multinational deal on scrapping its nuclear programme once it can confirm that a dispute over millions of dollars in frozen assets has been settled.

The pledge came as the Saturday deadline approached for the Stalinist state to start shutting down its Yongbyon reactor.

“There is no reason to be pessimistic. We will be faithful to this agreement if the Americans respect its clauses,” Kim Son-gyong, deputy director of the foreign ministry’s European department, told in an interview in Pyongyang.

“We will respect our commitment as it is written in the Feb 13 agreement. No more and no less,” he said.His remarks came several hours after the North’s foreign ministry, in a statement on the official Korean Central News Agency, said it would “confirm soon” whether funds in a Macau bank have been unfrozen as the United States has promised.

The announcements raised hopes of progress in the implementation of the February 13 six-nation denuclearisation agreement.

North Korea had refused to move until it got back its $25 million.

The statements were Pyongyang’s first response to US announcements this week that the funds in the Macau bank, frozen since 2005 on accusations of money laundering and counterfeiting, were available for collection.

“We will assume our responsibilities as soon as the $25 million frozen in Macau are in our hands,” Kim told AFP and Le Monde.

The United States, South Korea and Japan – three of the nations in the talks that reached February’s breakthrough deal – all acknowledged that Saturday’s deadline cannot be met.

But the United States wants the North at least to make a start, by inviting in UN atomic inspectors.

After visiting Tokyo and Seoul, US chief nuclear envoy Christopher Hill arrived in Beijing Friday for more consultations. He has said he is willing to meet his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-Gwan there if Kim requests it.

Hill responded cautiously to North Korea's statements, saying, “I heard that about a month ago.” He also urged North Korea to call in UN nuclear inspectors immediately or face a six-party joint response for its failure to uphold the February denuclearisation agreement.

Asked what Pyongyang could do to meet Saturday’s deadline on the initial steps towards dismantling its nuclear programmes, Hill said: “They need to call the IAEA (UN International Atomic Energy Agency).” But Kim defended North Korea’s stance saying, “To begin with, we must absolutely respect the principle that actions and words must be simultaneous.” “At the current time, the money isn’t in our hands,” Kim said. “There has only been a verbal statement (by the United States) which we were in the midst of verifying. But there is no reason to be pessimistic.” He declined to confirm a report by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency that North Korean officials had already arrived in Macau to collect the money in person.—AFP