Expert: North Korea willing to make deal

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

WASHINGTON -- North Korea is proposing to shutter its main nuclear reactor and allow U.N. monitoring in return for massive energy shipments and normal relations with the United States, according to an American nuclear expert who visited Pyongyang last week. David Albright, a former U.N. nuclear inspector, said in an interview Tuesday that North Korean officials told him they also wanted another key concession for shutting down their Yongbyon reactor: the lifting of U.S. financial restrictions imposed for alleged North Korean counterfeiting of U.S. currency and money laundering. Those restrictions have led to about $24 million in North Korean funds being frozen at a Macau bank. North Korea, the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia are set to begin a new round of talks Thursday in Beijing aimed at ridding the North of its nuclear weapons program. The push found new urgency after missile and nuclear bomb tests by the communist-led North last year.

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