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Officials from the six nations involved in negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear ambition began working group meetings on Thursday, while the South Korean chairman of a group on energy cooperation called for swift action to denuclearize the communist nation.

"The task of this working group is to come up with detailed plans and specific means of providing economic, energy and humanitarian assistance to the North as agreed in the Feb. 13 agreement," Chun Yung-woo, South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator said in a keynote speech.

He was referring to a nuclear deal signed in Beijing, under which North Korea is to shut down and seal its nuclear reactors in exchange for 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid.

A Russia-chaired working group on a peace regime in Northeast Asia will be held here early Friday morning. It will be followed the next day by the meeting of another working group, chaired by China, on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The six nations -- the two Koreas, the U.S., host China, Japan and Russia -- will hold a fresh round of the full-fledged nuclear disarmament talks in the Chinese capital beginning Monday.

One of main agendas for the energy working group is to decide how the countries will sequence the provision of energy aid to the North with the communist nation's shutdown of its nuclear facilities.

South Korean officials, speaking anonymously, earlier said the actions would have to take place "simultaneously."

Chun, heading the energy working group talks, said in his keynote speech that the provision of economic and political benefits to the North would have to be linked "to the speed and range" of Pyongyang's denuclearization measures.

South Korea has offered to shoulder the costs of providing the initial benefits to the North, while Washington's top nuclear negotiator, Christopher Hill, said Thursday that his country may provide generators.

According to the Feb. 13 statement, North Korea will receive an additional 950,000 tons of heavy fuel oil or equivalent assistance once it disables its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon.

All the countries have agreed to equally share the burden except Japan, whose soured relations over the lingering issue of Japanese citizens believed kidnapped by the North decades ago are preventing progress in its bilateral talks on normalizing ties with the communist state.

Thursday's meeting followed Washington's official designation Wednesday of a Macau bank as a money laundering institution with links to North Korea's alleged illicit financial activities, a move that will allow North Korea to reclaim only part of its frozen assets of US$24 million at the bank.

Kim Kye-gwan, the North's chief negotiators in the nuclear talks, has warned that his country will be forced to take "corresponding measures" in the denuclearization process if only part of its funds are unfrozen.

Kim Myong-kil, a delegate from the North's mission to the United Nations and the representative of the North at the energy group meeting, claimed earlier in the day that unfreezing all of North Korean assets at the Macau bank "was the deal between the North and the U.S."
Beijing, March 15 (Yonhap News)