WFP Reaches Agreement With North Korea

05/11/2006

BEIJING (AP) - The World Food Program has reached agreement with North Korea to resume food aid to the hunger-stricken country, but the operation will be smaller than it was before its suspension in December, the U.N. agency said Thursday.

The new program 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 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, citing North Korean government objections.

Those cut off from food distribution - about 4 million mainly elderly people - would be fed through state grain subsidies, North Korean authorities told the WFP. But Banbury said that without additional food from family members or other sources they could “face a very difficult situation.”

Banbury said North Korea justified the smaller program by saying they needed less aid because of improved harvests and didn’t want to foster a “culture of dependency” after a decade of foreign assistance.

He said the WFP supported those goals but still believed a larger program was needed. Grain donations from the group will fall to just 75,000 tons this year, down from the 512,000 tons that had been planned for last year, he said.

Banbury said food distribution would begin by the end of next week, but it could take much longer to bring the program up to full speed.

The program will supply vitamin-enriched biscuits to children and high-nutrition porridge to pregnant women, infants and new mothers. Food supplies will also be given to needy families in exchange for work on community development projects, he said.

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

But he said the agency would supply food aid only in areas where it could monitor distribution in order to assure foreign donors that the aid was reaching its intended beneficiaries. The United States and other donors want to ensure 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 the government to give up nuclear development.

The United States, South Korea and Japan, who are pushing the North to return to talks on its secretive nuclear program, are among the North’s main food donors. They say they have kept aid decisions separate from the nuclear talks.

The North has relied for more than a decade on foreign donations to feed its people. But the secretive Stalinist regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has restricted activities of foreign aid agencies and pressed them to reduce the size of their foreign staffs in the country.

The WFP suspended aid in December after the North asked the agency to shift its focus to economic development aid. The two sides have been negotiating since then.

Late last year, the North expelled all private aid groups in apparent retaliation for the European Union’s decision to sponsor a United Nations resolution criticizing its human rights record.

The WFP says it has spent about $1.7 billion over the past decade on aid to North Korea, the agency’s biggest single aid project to date.