By DPA
Moscow : The transfer of frozen North Korean funds from a Macau-based bank could be settled "in days", a Russian diplomat said Wednesday of an account Pyongyang says is key to the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
The announcement came after a finance official in Moscow said a Russian bank was preparing to execute the transfer.
Pyongyang says it will close down its nuclear plants after $25 million are freed from Macau's Banco Delta Asia, where the US froze North Korean government accounts in 2005.
Washington has agreed to release the funds but North Korea refuses to withdraw the money, insisting on a transaction to another bank. No financial institution has been willing to transfer money said to have been involved in drug smuggling and counterfeiting.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov said Wednesday that the Russian Finance Ministry and US officials were jointly working on a proposal to move the money.
"We are, in theory, ready," Losyukov told reporters, according to Interfax. "In general, it's most likely a question of days."
Earlier in the day, a finance ministry official said an unnamed Russian bank was already working on completing the transfer.
"Such an operation is expected and is being prepared," said the official, who was not identified, Interfax reported.
The official said the North Korean government had an account with the Russian bank in question.
More details would be made available after "a number of technical points" were resolved, he added.
"The Russian side, moved by interest to aid in every way the quick normalisation of the problem, does not protest against the possible and feasible participation in the realisation of the given financial operation," Russian foreign ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said.
North Korea and Russia have both blamed the problems on the US.
"The problem was not created by us", it was "entirely and totally" a US problem, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this month.
"We are studying the situation," Lavrov added at the time. "The US must take measures that will allow this operation to be completed in spite of the sanctions."