Talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program came to a standstill Thursday when North Korea's chief envoy abruptly left the Beijing negotiations, UPI reported. Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan left the six-party talks and headed to Beijing's international airport for a flight to Pyongyang, Kyodo reported. China's chief delegate to the talks, Wu Dawai, said talks would be recessed because North Korean funds had not been transferred from a Macao bank to a bank in Beijing, Kyodo reported. Yonhap reported that officials said the $25 million -- frozen because of U.S. allegations that the North Korean funds were part of a counterfeiting ploy -- were had not been freed because of "minor technical problems." North Korea has said it will not move ahead with abandoning its nuclear program until its frozen assets are freed from the bank in Macao. The Financial Times reported that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice convinced the Treasury Department to unfreeze the funds.
