North Korea hurt by financial restrictions

WASHINGTON – The lead U.S. envoy in nuclear talks with North Korea told lawmakers Wednesday that U.S. financial restrictions connected with North Korean money laundering and counterfeiting had forced banks around the world to question their business dealings with Kim Jong Il’s government.\nAssistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said the measures, which the United States is working to resolve as part of a recent disarmament agreement with Pyongyang, had hurt the communist government by hindering its access to the international financial system.\nHill spoke as the State Department announced that he will meet with his negotiating counterpart, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, in New York on March 5-6 to discuss the first steps toward establishing normal ties after decades of hostility that followed the 1950-1953 Korean War.\nThe bilateral meeting emerged from a Feb. 13 six-nation agreement in which North Korea agreed to shutter its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon within 60 days in exchange for aid. That accord has sparked strong criticism in Washington, especially among conservatives who see it as rewarding the North for years of bad behavior.\nHill assured lawmakers at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that the agreement “begins to lay out a path to complete denuclearization, not just a temporary shutdown of the reactor at Yongbyon.”\nAlthough the United States was working to settle its financial restrictions against the Macau bank quickly, Hill said in prepared testimony, “This will not solve all of North Korea’s problems with the international financial system. It must stop its illicit conduct and improve its international financial reputation in order to do that.”