TEHRAN, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani said on Thursday that the government of the Republic of Korea (ROK) is obliged to unfreeze Iranian funds in the country's banks blocked under the pretext of U.S. sanctions, the official IRNA news agency reported.
"Regardless of the outcome of the Vienna talks, the ROK government is committed to releasing Iran's blocked funds in currency, and unilateral U.S. sanctions cannot justify non-payment of its debts to Iran," Bagheri Kani said in a meeting with ROK's Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-kun in Austria's capital Vienna.
ROK's "illegal and unjustifiable" refusal to pay its debts to Iran will be a dark point in the history of relations between the two countries, he said, adding Seoul must act as soon as possible to unfreeze Iran's monetary resources.
According to IRNA, the meeting between Bagheri Kani and Choi was not directly related to the current negotiations in Vienna over the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal.
The meeting took place within the framework of the usual bilateral consultations between the two countries and at the request of the ROK side, IRNA said.
Over 7 billion U.S. dollars of Iranian funds from oil exports are frozen in ROK's banks amid U.S. sanctions. ■
