South Korea remains cautious over North Korea nuclear talks

South Korea's foreign minister sounded a note of caution ahead of six-nation talks on freezing the North's nuclear program, saying Wednesday there is far to go before a final agreement is reached.

The negotiations - which involve the United States, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan - are set to resume Feb. 8 in Beijing.

"We hope for a joint written document, but it remains to be seen whether the countries will reach an agreement," Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said at his regular briefing.

His comments came as a U.S. Treasury envoy said his agency's suspicions of illegal financial activity involving North Korean-linked bank accounts had been "vindicated" in talks with Pyongyang officials.

"I think we are now in a position after a very lengthy investigation ... to start moving forward and trying to bring some resolution to this matter," said Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Daniel Glaser, although he would not specify what type of resolution.

John Negroponte, nominated by President Bush to serve in the No. 2 post in the State Department, said in Washington there were grounds for optimism due to continued international pressure on Pyongyang.

U.S. efforts to isolate the North from the international financial system for alleged counterfeiting and money laundering, he said, "can provide a bit of leverage" at the six-nation talks.

Washington has blacklisted a Macau bank it claims was complicit in North Korea's alleged illicit activities, making other institutions cautious of dealing with the North for fear of losing access to the U.S. market. North Korea has denied wrongdoing.

The dispute led the North to walk out of the nuclear talks for more than a year. In October, while still boycotting the talks, North Korea conducted its first-ever nuclear weapon test. Arms negotiations resumed in December, but no progress was made due to the financial issue.

Song said he expected the bank dispute to be resolved this week. But, he cautioned: "It is just the beginning." "We have a long way to go before we adopt a written agreement," he told reporters.

Russia's envoy to the talks said he didn't expect immediate results from next week's talks, although those negotiations could lay the groundwork for a future agreement, the Interfax news agency reported.

"I think that there are unlikely to be any concrete or significant agreements resulting from these negotiations but we should be able to establish quite clearly the route to reaching them in subsequent meetings," Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov said, according to Interfax.

In unusually harsh language, Losyukov warned that North Korea's nuclear ambitions threatened Russia's Far East, which shares a border with the isolated Communist state.

"The population of the Far East is worried at the rise of this nuclear threat right on their doorstep," Losyukov told Interfax. He also warned North Korea not to stage more nuclear tests, saying this would bring a harsh international response.

Wu Dawei, China's representative to the talks, expressed hopes the six nations can reach an agreement after three or four days, but added that "this requires diligent efforts by all sides." South Korea's chief nuclear envoy said any new deal would call for disarmament over a short period, unlike a previous U.S.-North Korea agreement in 1994 that fell apart in late 2002, triggering the latest nuclear crisis.

"This is not a plan for that long of a term," Chun Yung-woo told reporters Wednesday, before leaving for Moscow to consult with Russian officials. "This will have to be short-term." North Korea, meanwhile, kept up its harsh rhetoric against the United States.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency accused Washington of conducting more than 110 reconnaissance flights over its territory in January, and accused South Korea of carrying out more than 70 similar spy flights.

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