Wobble Watch: Treasury Won’t Lift Sanctions on Kim Jong Il’s Macau Accounts

New press reports link the bank accounts that mean so much to Kim Jong Il with  his nuclear and other  WMD programs. 

North Korea used its accounts at a Macau-based bank, suspected of having served as a base for the North’s alleged illicit activities, to pay for devices that could be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons, a Japanese daily reported Saturday.

Quoting unidentified sources, Yomiuri Shimbun said China froze North Korean accounts worth US$24 million in the Banco Delta Asia (BDA) in Macau last year in line with the U.S. investigation into the bank as a conduit for North Korea’s alleged illegal activities including U.S. currency counterfeiting and money laundering.

Lifting those restrictions would probably  violate U.N.S.C.R. 1718.  That’s why anyone who is expecting the United States to yield on those accounts, barring severe restrictions on how the funds are spent (ie., on food), is dreaming:

The U.S. State Department on Thursday denied reports that the country is considering easing financial sanctions on North Korea before six-way talks on the North’s nuclear program resume. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said reports that U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill asked China to unfreeze some of the North’s assets in Banco Delta Asia (BDA), the Macau bank accused of laundering Pyongyang’s money, was “certainly” not true.

Rather, the U.S. sent Treasury Department Under Secretary Stuart Levey to Russia to discuss ways to prevent the North from engaging in any illegal financial transactions and boost financial sanctions against the communist country. Levey was likely to suggest that Russia freeze accounts North Korea is believed to have opened in the country after its accounts in BDA were frozen.

Asked about unfreezing accounts involved in North Korea’s legitimate trade, Reuters reported the U.S. government was firm on the matter, quoting a senior official as saying, “It is all one big criminal enterprise. You can’t separate it out.

Talks have cosmetic value, but  substantively, they will go nowhere.