[USFK Forums] Fate of nuke talks in N. Korean hands: Seoul aide [Korea Herald]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Monday, February 27, 2006

Fate of nuke talks in N. Korean hands: Seoul aide

The Korea Herald, Monday, February 27, 2006

From news reports

The fate of talks on North Korea`s nuclear program depends on whether Pyongyang takes action on illicit activities that prompted a U.S. crackdown, a South Korean official said in Washington Saturday.

North Korea knows what it is expected to do on charges raised by Washington that it is behind the counterfeiting of U.S. currency and money laundering, said Song Min soon, the chief national security adviser to South Korea`s president.

"The six party talks can go forward only if the North takes the necessary action on currency counterfeiting," Song told Korean correspondents in Washington.

Song was previously South Korea`s lead negotiator to the talks aimed at ending Pyongyang`s nuclear programs, which also involve North Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China. The talks have been stalled since November.

Song was in Washington to meet White House national security advisers and State Department officials.

Song played down a planned meeting by North Korean diplomats and U.S. officials in New York on the financial crackdown, saying such a meeting would probably not automatically yield a breakthrough.

But all the countries involved in the talks, including North Korea, believe the next round of the talks should be held in the first half of April, he said.

He warned against premature hopes for concrete results from a trip to Washington by Ri Gun, a senior North Korean Foreign Ministry official, to get a U.S. briefing on the communist country`s alleged involvement in currency counterfeiting.

"It could be useful, since the two sides can find a solution when they talk face to face rather than indirectly," Song said. "But it would be premature to expect that they will find a concrete solution."

North Korea has said it would be unreasonable to continue the talks until Washington ends a crackdown on firms suspected of being involved in the North`s illicit financial activities.

It also said in a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that U.S. efforts to draw South Korea into a campaign against the spread of weapons of mass destruction - called the Proliferation Security Initiative - would create new obstacles to the talks.

"South Korea joins the international community in its concerns about the illegal activities that North Korea has been linked to," Song said.

"It is very clear what that means," he was quoted as saying in the same meeting with South Korean reporters.

"North Korea needs to see what that means, and we don`t need to play the prosecutor, the defense lawyer and the judge for all the world to see," he said, in an apparent reference to criticism that South Korea has not more to directly confront the North.

Meanwhile, South Korea`s intelligence chief visited Washington in January to discuss North Korea`s alleged involvement in currency counterfeiting, a South Korean government official said.

During the trip, Kim Seung gyu, director of the National Intelligence Service, met with his U.S. counterpart, CIA director Porter Goss, and "exchanged information related to the counterfeiting," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It was a usual exchange of information between two countries, which did not involve any discussion on resolving the issue," he said.

Quoting an unidentified diplomat source, the local newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported earlier in the day that in his meeting with Goss, Kim promised that South Korea will cooperate with the U.S. investigation into North Korea`s alleged illegal activities.

In a parliamentary testimony in January, Kim said that his agency had no clear evidence that North Korea has been engaged in currency counterfeiting after 1998, indicating that the communist country was involved in making fake dollars before that.

A report in Hong Kong said yesterday U.S. authorities are preparing to seize more than $2.67 million from Hong Kong bank accounts linked to trade in North Korean counterfeit U.S. bank notes.

The money is frozen in three accounts belonging to an unemployed mainland Chinese woman, Kwok Hiu Ha, with Chiyu Banking, a subsidiary of Bank of China Hong Kong, the Sunday Morning Post reported, citing U.S. court documents.

The funds are believed to be the first known link between Hong Kong`s banking system and an underground trade in "supernotes," or high quality 100 dollar U.S. bills, the newspaper said.

FBI officials last week met Hong Kong police investigators and warned them the existence of the fake bills was considered a matter of urgent national security, with the trade seen posing a significant economic threat to the United States, the Post said.

U.S. government sources told the newspaper that the Department of Justice would soon be proceeding with legal action to seize the funds.

Kwok, a registered money remitter in Hong Kong according to court documents, had told investigators she had recently arrived in Hong Kong from mainland China, the Post said.

The Department of Justice had the money frozen a year ago following undercover work by a private investigator probing a counterfeit cigarette operation, it said, quoting U.S. court documents.


2006.02.27



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