US chief representative to the Six-Party Talks Christopher Hill met with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei yesterday to discuss ways to transfer Democratic People's Republic of Korea's frozen funds and restart the negotiation to resolve the nuclear issue.

The time has come to resolve the issue of DPRK's frozen accounts at Banco Delta Asia (BDA) in Macao, the US assistant secretary of state was quoted as telling reporters during his one-day visit to Beijing. The bank is "having legal difficulty" in transferring the money.

Hill said he and Wu agreed that Pyongyang appears ready to honor a February agreement of shutting down its nuclear plants in exchange of energy aid.

But the failure of the funds' transfer has greatly hampered the landmark deal because the DPRK has refused to take any substantive steps to fulfill its 60-day commitment until it gets the $25 million, he said.

Hill didn't give specific details of his meeting with Chinese officials but expressed his confidence in the Six-Party Talks.

"It certainly is not dead," he said. "We (do) have a pretty serious bump in the road here, we plan to get over it It really is a technical matter, which cannot just be solved through political means."

The funds in BDA were frozen after the US Treasury designated the bank a "primary money laundering concern" in September 2005.

Washington agreed to release the funds in a bid to push the nuclear negotiations forward, but it prevented the bank from carrying out any direct or indirect transactions with the US financial system.

It is proving difficult for Pyongyang to transfer the money because other foreign banks are reluctant to handle it for fear of similar sanctions.

Officials of relevant parties have been working hard to solve the issue but no major breakthrough has yet been achieved.

Wu and Hill also discussed China-US relations and the issue of climate change and the situation in Darfur.

China Daily news

(China Daily 05/31/2007 page2)