Posted on : Sep.19,2006 19:58 KST Modified on : Sep.19,2006 20:22 KST

South Korea asked the United States to suspend additional sanctions against North Korea, concerned that they would keep the Pyongyang regime from coming back to nuclear negotiations, a diplomatic source here said Monday.

The U.S. response isn't yet clear, he said, but the U.S. apparently withheld any announcement until after the bilateral presidential summit last week.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, while in Washington, also specifically asked the U.S. to expedite and conclude the ongoing Treasury Department investigation into a Macau bank, a probe that North Korea is using as an excuse to stay away from the negotiations, the source said.

The U.S. administration has been considering sanctions against Pyongyang following North Korea's missile tests in July. They include reinstating the measures lifted in 1995, when the U.S. and North Korea reached an agreement on Pyongyang's freeze of nuclear activities, and in 2000 when the communist nation agreed to a missile moratorium, according to the source.


"The South Korean government believes that such sanctions could make it impossible for the six-party talks to resume, and therefore asked the Bush administration to suspend them," he said.

U.S. officials say they are reviewing these actions as a follow-up to a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted after Pyongyang's missile tests. The resolution calls on U.N. members to step up vigilance to ensure funds and material do not flow into North Korea's missile and weapons of mass destruction programs.

Seoul officials have contacted senior figures at the White House, the Treasury and the State Departments to deliver South Korea's stance, and the U.S. apparently decided to hold off on any action until after Roh's visit, according to the source.

In talks with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Roh asked for a swift conclusion of the probe of Banco Delta Asia (BDA), citing its negative impact on efforts to resume six-party talks.

A year ago the Treasury had designated BDA as a primary money laundering concern abetting North Korea, leading to Pyongyang's boycott of the six-nation negotiations aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

South and North Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan are members of the talks that were last held in November.

Paulson did not give a clear response to the request, the source said.

But Roh's office Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul denied the Washington official's remarks Tuesday (local time), saying the president had never asked the U.S. to halt additional sanctions on North Korea.

"President Roh stressed a harmony between U.S. law enforcement and (global) efforts for the resumption of the six-party talks.

But he didn't ask for an early conclusion of Washington's investigation into BDA," Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Yoon Tae-young told Yonhap News Agency.

Yoon also stressed that Roh had never asked Washington to defer its additional sanctions on the North until after his summit with Bush in Washington last week.

"The South Korean government is still convinced that U.S. sanctions on North Korea should be examined in a way that helps the settlement of the North's nuclear weapons and missile problems.

Such a position has already been delivered to the U.S. through diplomatic channels," the spokesman said.

"It is not desirable for us to intervene in any U.S. decision on sanctions against North Korea."

Song Min-soon, the chief presidential secretary for security, made similar remarks during his meeting with senior journalists in Seoul on Tuesday.

Song, who accompanied Roh on his Washington visit, insisted that the president did not ask for an early end to the ongoing U.S. investigation into BDA during his meeting with Paulson. "The Seoul government had never requested that any U.S. decision on additional sanctions on North Korea be delayed until after the Roh-Bush summit."

Meanwhile, in efforts to revive the stalled talks, senior officials from Seoul, Washington and Tokyo are expected to meet next week or early next month, South Korean Ambassador Lee Tae-sik told reporters Monday.

The tripartite meeting would simplify the process for the three nations to hold separate bilateral negotiations, Lee said.

He also acknowledged difficulties for Seoul in relaying its positions when Japan was drafting the U.N. Security Council resolution on North Korea's missile launches.

Washington/Seoul, Sept. 19 (Yonhap News)



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