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North Korea's access to international banking must be restored to end a cash row which is obstructing a nuclear disarmament accord, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper said Friday. The dispute over North Korean accounts, which had been frozen in Macau's Banco Delta Asia (BDA) at US instigation, has blocked any progress on the February 13 six-nation deal. The North, which tested an atomic weapon last October, says it will take the first step to shut down its Yongbyon reactor as soon as it receives the 25 million dollars in the accounts. But the Chosun Sinbo newspaper said the North's goal was not just to retrieve the money. "For North Korea, which has insisted on the lifting of financial sanctions, it does not matter whether it can withdraw the money or not," said the paper, which is published by pro-Pyongyang residents in Japan and reflects the opinions of the North's government. "Unless normalisation of financial transactions by international standards is realised, it cannot be said that its demand has been met," said the paper on its website. The report confirms the North's position that it will not move unless the funds are transferred to another bank, so it can confirm it can freely transfer funds internationally once again. After the US Treasury blacklisted BDA in September 2005 on suspicion of money-laundering and handling the North's counterfeit notes, a series of other banks in Asia were persuaded to stop handling Pyongyang's business -- making even legitimate transactions difficult. The February agreement set April 14 as the deadline for the North to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor as the first step in scrapping its nuclear programmes. This slipped by because of the unresolved bank dispute. Washington says the funds have been freed for collection and it has done all that it should. All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.
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