North Korea has said it was willing to implement an agreement to disarm once financial sanctions are lifted, the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog reported on Wednesday. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was speaking in Beijing after a trip to North Korea which he described as “quite useful”. Washington also said that within 30 days of the February deal at six-party talks it would settle a dispute over North Korean bank accounts frozen in Macau, in southern China, that Washington says had been used to launder illegal earnings for Pyongyang. “The Macau issue will be resolved as we’ve promised,” US envoy Christopher Hill told reporters in Beijing. ElBaradei told a news conference that “It is in the interests of North Korea to normalise relations with the IAEA. We cleared the air. We opened the door for a normal relationship.” He said North Korea remained committed to the February 13 agreement reached at six-party talks grouping the two Koreas, Russia, Japan, the United States and host China. On Wednesday, the North’s top nuclear negotiator said he was too busy to attend. Instead, ElBaradei met another vice foreign minister and the head of the North’s atomic energy agency, Ri Je-son, a spokeswoman said. IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said a meeting with nuclear envoy Kim Kye-gwan was unlikely. “We were told he is busy working on the upcoming six-party talks,” Fleming told Reuters by telephone from Pyongyang, referring to a Beijing forum grouping the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia.
