World Food Program: Food aid to North Korea will resume

The World Food Program has reached agreement with North Korea to resume food aid to the hunger-stricken country after a six-month suspension, but the operation will be smaller than it was before, the U.N. agency said Thursday.

Photo: World Food Program: Food aid to North Korea will resume

The WFP will feed 1.9 million of the "most needy" people in the North, Tony Banbury, the agency's Asia regional director, said at a news conference in Beijing. That is down from the 6.5 million people the agency was feeding in past years.

The WFP suspended aid in December after the North asked it to switch focus to economic development. The agency argued that the change was too abrupt and would leave millions hungry.

The new agreement was signed Wednesday in Pyongyang, Banbury said.

"We would have liked to see a bigger operation, but that was not possible at this time," he said.

Banbury didn't give a date for food distribution to resume, but he said the agency was already making preparations.

North Korea has relied on foreign donations to feed its people since disclosing in the mid-1990s that its state-run farm system had collapsed after decades of mismanagement and the loss of Soviet subsidies. Famine is believed to have killed 2 million people.

But the secretive Stalinist regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il restricted activities of aid agencies and pressed them to reduce the size of their foreign staffs in the country.

Under the new agreement, the WFP will be allowed 10 foreign staff members in North Korea and an office in the capital, Pyongyang, Banbury said. In the past, the agency had 32 foreigners in the country and five regional offices in addition to the capital.

Banbury said the agency would supply food aid only in areas where it could monitor distribution in order to assure foreign donors that it was reaching its intended beneficiaries.

The United States and other donors want to see that food isn't diverted to the North's huge military or to reward ruling party supporters.

Efforts to avert starvation in the North have coincided with lengthy disarmament negotiations aimed at persuading Kim's government to give up nuclear development.

Governments pushing for denuclearization include the United States, rival South Korea and Japan, which also are among the North's main food donors. They say they have kept aid decisions separate from the nuclear talks, reports the AP.

I.L.