N. Korea wants financial access

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea said Wednesday it was returning to nuclear disarmament talks to get access to its frozen overseas bank accounts, a vital source of hard currency.\nThe North's Foreign Ministry made only indirect mention of its underground nuclear test last month. Instead, it focused in an official statement on its desire to end U.S. financial restrictions by going back to six-nation arms talks that it has boycotted for a year.\nConfirming other nations' reports of the Tuesday agreement, the Foreign Ministry said Pyongyang decided to return to negotiations "on the premise that the issue of lifting financial sanctions will be discussed and settled between the (North) and the U.S. within the framework of the six-party talks."\nIn Moscow, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said the disarmament talks could resume this month or by the end of December at the latest, the ITAR-TASS News Agency reported. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the top U.S. negotiator, had given a similar time frame on Tuesday.\nRussian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow expects the talks to start shortly, adding that the date was still being discussed.\nKi-moon, the next U.N. secretary-general, hailed Pyongyang's move as an "encouraging signal." \n"I hope that we will find a solution to the nuclear problem on the Korean peninsula," he was quoted by ITAR-TASS as saying.\nWashington had banned transactions between American financial institutions and Banco Delta Asia SARL -- a bank in the Chinese territory of Macau -- saying it was being used by North Korea for money laundering.\nThe ban is believed to have blocked access to some $24 million for the North's leaders, who indulge their taste for luxury goods like cognac and fine wines while the vast majority of North Koreans live in poverty.\nU.S. officials also sought to rally other countries to prevent the North from doing business abroad, saying all transactions involving Pyongyang were suspected of having to do with counterfeiting and money laundering.\nIn Seoul, South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said he expects involved countries to discuss the disarmament talks when they gather in Vietnam for an Asia-Pacific summit in mid-November and that negotiations among China, Japan, Russia, the United States and the two Koreas were expected to take place after that. He did not indicate when.\nHill cautioned as he left Beijing, where the deal was struck, that "a full plan" had to be in place for there to be any hope for progress in implementing an agreement reached in September 2005, in which the North pledged to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security guarantees. He did not elaborate.