U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2006)

U.S. Department of State

Interview With Reuters

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Washington, DC
December 16, 2006
2:00 p.m. EST

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QUESTION: If you did get a suspension or a halt in Yongbyon activities next week, what do you do to ensure that when the Sanctions Committee in New York then takes up the Resolution 1718 and begins to make some hard decisions about how that resolution is going to be implemented, how are you going to ensure that everybody is going to say, yeah, we need to go through with this resolution and not -- I mean, because there's some concern that if you show progress in Beijing then people will say, well, you know, we can kind of pause on the sanctions?

SECRETARY RICE: I don't think you're going to see that.

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QUESTION: What kind of progress would you envision in the working group talks on the financial assets, Banco Delta Asia?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, the working group is first and foremost to be very clear with the North Koreans about what the requirements, our legal requirements, are. Because remember, this is about illicit activities. This is not a set of sanctions. This is North Korean illicit activities. And so there's no kind of schedule for progress or anything like that. Obviously the issue is: Are the North Koreans prepared to start to try to rectify the situations that led to this in terms of illicit activities? They know how to stop this anytime, stop illicit activities.

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QUESTION: Right. But you're the Secretary of State and the policy is first and foremost here in this building. And there is at least some concern among Republican partisans of this Administration that in fact there has been a decision to show more flexibility on this financial asset issue.

SECRETARY RICE: The financial BDA, Bank of Macao, has to do with the North Koreans having violated our laws and we are not going to allow them to continue to violate our laws. But you know, obviously we will look at the totality of all of this and see where we are after the next couple of rounds.

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