Washington expects North Korea will meet a commitment to shut down its nuclear facilities this month after it receives funds frozen in a Macau bank, US envoy Christopher Hill said today.
"I do believe the DPRK [North Korea] continues to signal to us privately and publicly, and most recently last night, that as soon as the banking matter is resolved, they will move quickly to implement their part of the deal," Mr Hill said in the Philippines.
"I am expecting it very soon. I expected that last month, and hopefully we can get that done this month," added the chief US negotiator in talks on dismantling North Korea's nuclear programme.
His comments signalled a softer line than earlier in the week when he said Pyongyang should not wait for the money to arrive before shutting down its Soviet-era reactor.
A senior North Korean official, also in Manila for preparatory meetings for a summit of Asia's largest security bloc, the 26-member ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), said Pyongyang would take action when the funds were transferred.
North Korean officials had defended their attempts to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons and described the United States, South Korea and Japan, as an "alliance of war".
Washington is pushing Asian countries to adopt a tough non-proliferation stance at the ARF meeting on August 2nd.
North Korea agreed to shut down its reactor at six-country nuclear talks in February but insisted it would not move until it received $25 million frozen at Macau's Banco Delta Asia.
The money was blocked after the United States blacklisted the bank, accusing it of laundering illicit North Korean funds. North Korea missed a mid-April deadline to begin the shutdown because the transfer was held up.
But North Korea fired several short-range missiles this morning, despite the US optimism about the six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear arms programme.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe downplayed the missile firing's significance while South Korea's National Intelligence Service said the launches were part of an annual military drill.