Roughly a month after the six-nation North Korea nuclear accord was reached in Beijing on Feb. 13, follow-up events are due to get underway in earnest this week.

First, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, will arrive in Pyongyang on Tuesday. Then a series of meetings between representatives from the six concerned parties will be held in Beijing from Thursday to next Wednesday.

A topic of cardinal concern is the partial or total release of US$24 million of North Korean funds from the Banco Delta Asia (BDA) in Macao. Kim Kye-gwan, North Korea’s vice foreign minister, has said that the North will take only limited steps if the U.S. leaves some of the funds frozen. In light of this, the BDA issue may affect the upcoming meetings.

On Thursday, a working-group meeting on energy and economic cooperation will be held in the Chinese capital under the chairmanship of South Korea. A working-group meeting on peace and security in Northeast Asia is scheduled for Friday, to be followed by a working-group meeting on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula on Saturday.

The highlight of the series of meetings will be a working group on normalizing relations between the U.S. and North Korea on Sunday, a follow-up to similar talks held in New York on March 6 and 7.

The following Monday, the six participating countries will hold a plenary session, also in Beijing, to discuss in detail how to shut down North Korea's nuclear facilities. As such, a watershed in the North Korean nuclear issue may come a week from now.

(englishnews@chosun.com )