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North Korea has yet to respond to a Macau bank's decision to release the North's assets frozen in the bank, despite the U.S. claim that it has finally resolved the issue that kept the North from shutting down its nuclear facilities under a February nuclear deal.

"We certainly have confirmed that the bank accounts are open.

So we have truly fulfilled our role in this and now it's up to them," Christopher Hill, Washington's chief nuclear negotiator, told reporters in Seoul.

The North's US$25 million frozen in the Banco Delta Asia was available for withdrawal or transfer as of Tuesday.

"I haven't heard anything," said Victor Cha, a security advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush on Korea and deputy head of U.S. delegation to six-nation talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear ambition.

The Korean-American advisor came to Seoul Wednesday after a four-day trip to Pyongyang, where he held discussions with North Korean nuclear negotiators while accompanying U.S. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Anthony Principi, a former U.S. presidential secretary for veterans affairs, whose main purpose for the trip was to retrieve the remains of six U.S. soldiers from the 1950-53 Korean War.

Richardson said in a news conference here on Wednesday that North Korea has promised to start shutting down its nuclear facilities within 24 hours after receiving its funds held up at the Macau bank.

Cha said he did not receive any response from the North on the issue during his trip to the North Korean capital.

Pyongyang has demanded the funds be released to it via another financial institution.

The United States says the financial issue is now up to the North, but the communist nation has not yet taken initial denuclearization steps laid out in a Feb. 13 agreement, in which the North agreed to shut down and seal its nuclear facilities within 60 days.

"It's time for North Korea to move. Before North Korea moves, there's nothing we can do," Chun Yung-woo, South Korea's top nuclear envoy, told reporters after emerging from a lunch meeting with his U.S. counterpart Hill.

Chun did not say whether Pyongyang would consider the Macau bank's decision as the final resolution of the frozen funds issue, but noted it "could take a few days" for North Korea to make any judgment.

The 60-day deadline for the North to shut down its nuclear facilities expires on Saturday.

Cha, meanwhile, said there have been no discussions with North Korea on extending the deadline and that such a decision would have to be made in the context of six-nation talks on the North's nuclear programs.

"No one can unilaterally declare" such a decision, Cha told reporters.

The nuclear disarmament talks involve South and North Korea, the United States, Japan, China and Russia.

No date has been set for the next round of the talks, which began in 2003.

Seoul, April 12 (Yonhap News)