BEIJING—North Korea said on Friday it may be ready to move in a stand-off over frozen assets it insists be unblocked before shutting down its nuclear reactor, one day before the first deadline of an atomic disarmament deal.
Under an international agreement struck in February, the secretive state has until Saturday to start shutting down its Soviet-era reactor and source of its weapons-grade plutonium.
Washington has said authorities in Macau have unblocked about $25 million of North Korean funds at Banco Delta Asia (BDA), which was frozen for about 18 months due to suspected links to illicit activities, and Pyongyang can now pick up the money.
"A DPRK (North Korea) financial institution concerned will confirm soon whether the measure is valid," the North's KCNA news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.
Chief U.S. negotiator Chris Hill, who arrived in Beijing from Seoul on Friday, said he did not know if North Korea would meet the deadline.
"That's up to them. I'm not hoping for anything," he told reporters at Beijing airport.
Hill met Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister He Yafei, a source told Reuters, but it was unclear whether he would meet his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan.
"We don't know if Kim Kye-gwan is coming. But anything could still happen," the source said. "Right now, we are at a very critical stage."
North Korean officials told a U.S. delegation visiting Pyongyang earlier this week it could move, within a day of receiving the funds, to invite international nuclear inspectors back into the country, who would oversee the shutdown.
The return of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, expelled in 2002, is part of the deal reached among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear arms programmes in return for aid and better diplomatic standing.
At separate inter-Korea Red Cross talks, North Korea rejected the South's call to help search for prisoners from the Korean War and civilians believed to have been abducted by the North since then.
At meetings that closed early on Friday in North Korea, Red Cross officials agreed to exchanges of video messages between family members who were separated on either side of the Korean border.
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