North Korea's top nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan gets into a car upon his arrival at Beijing airport on Saturday. Kim arrived for the resumption of long-stalled talks on disarming Pyongyang's nuclear program./AP

South Korea's chief negotiator Chun Yung-woo said Sunday, "I met other top negotiators and they seem to think that things are more difficult than at any other time. The talks are in some sense a way of feeling out the other side. It won't be easy to produce substantial results in a short period.” In public, the U.S. and North Korean chief negotiators engaged in a public war of words, each claiming the onus ball is in the other’s court. On arrival in Beijing on Sunday, Hill said, "We either agree to go forward on a diplomatic track, or we have to go on a more difficult track, a track that involves sanctions.” He added the conviction that Pyongyang knows well that the sanctions “will remain in effect as long as [North Korea] isn't denuclearized.

But Kim, who arrived Saturday morning, said the U.S. must lift the sanctions first to implement a statement of principles agreed in the last round of the talks last year, when the North promised to give up its nuclear program in return for economic aid and other benefits. "Any questions?" a relaxed-looking Kim asked reporters. He added, "The problem will be resolved when the hostile policy (of the U.S.) is changed to a policy of co-existence. I do not yet know whether the U.S. is prepared to do that.” Kim admitted it was difficult to be optimistic about the talks, saying he wanted to see what kind of answers the U.S. will give after a bilateral meeting in November.

U.S. chief negotiator in six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear Christopher Hill talks to reporters on arrival at Beijing airport on Sunday afternoon./Yonhap

All eyes are also on another planned meeting, where the U.S. and the North will discuss Pyongyang’s accounts frozen in the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia. Dozens of North Korean accounts worth altogether US$24 million were frozen by the U.S. Treasury there over the North’s dollar-counterfeiting activities. The meeting is to be held separately from the six-party talks but is directly related to their success, since the North has repeated that lifting the financial sanctions is key to resumption of the talks. The U.S. has merely said it will “listen” to what North Korea thinks about the matter. A senior U.S. official on Saturday said the two countries will simply exchange information on the issue. Washington insists the sanctions were a matter of law-enforcement.

Daniel Glaser, the U.S. Treasury’s deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, will attend the working group meeting. Glaser has been in charge of investigating North Korea's illegal activities including its production of fake U.S. dollar notes. His North Korean counterpart will be the Foreign Ministry's U.S. chief Li Gun, a government official here said. Li was also Glaser's negotiating partner in a meeting in New York in March this year. However, some say another financial expert from North Korea will attend the meeting, most likely a senior official from the Central Committee’s notorious Bureau 39, which North Korean defectors say was set up in the 1970s to create a personal slush fund for Kim Jong-il, given the nature of the $24 million frozen in BDA.

North Korea in the March meeting denied all U.S. charges and called on the U.S. to share evidence so it can “hunt down” the producer of the so-called supernotes, seize evidence like paper and ink and show it to the U.S. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. will present new evidence to back its claim and whether North Korea will propose its own compromise to address the matter. Seoul is no part of the working group, not even as an observer.

(englishnews@chosun.com )