YONHAP NEWS

N. Korea refuses to accept further food aid from U.S.: State Dept.

   By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, March 17 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has refused to accept humanitarian food aid from the U.S., the State Department said Tuesday, amid escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula over North Korea's planned rocket launch and ongoing joint military drills between South Korea and the U.S.

   "North Korea has informed the United States that it does not wish to receive additional U.S. food assistance at this time," spokesman Robert Wood said. "We will work with U.S. NGOs and the North Korean counterparts to ensure that food that's already been delivered -- or food that's already in North Korea -- is distributed to the intended recipients."

   He was referring to nongovernmental organizations.

   The suspension of food aid comes as North Korea is threatening to orbit a satellite, which the U.S. and its allies see as a cover for testing a ballistic missile capable of hitting the mainland U.S.

   Talk is rife over possible further sanctions on the North after the launch, scheduled for early April, although China and Russia have shown restraint.

   The U.S. has delivered 169,000 tons of food to North Korea since May, when Washington pledged to provide up to 500,000 tons to help alleviate the North's chronic food shortage.

   "The last shipment of U.S. food aid, which was nearly 5,000 metric tons of vegetable oil and corn-soy blend, arrived in North Korea in late January, and is being distributed by U.S. NGOs," Wood said.

   The spokesman said he had no idea what caused the North Koreans to reject further food assistance, hinting that the North's reluctance to issue visas for Korean-speaking monitors at the World Food Program might have played a role.

   "I know that that was still an issue that was trying to be worked out," the spokesman said. "Whether or not that is the reason -- the real reason that the North decided to do what it's doing, I don't know. I'd have to refer you to them."

   North Korea has been refusing to issue visas to Korean-speaking monitors, whose mission is to assure that the food aid is not being funneled as suspected to the military and government elite.

   The spokesman said the U.S. is ready to deliver the remainder of the promised food aid.

   "As you know, the food situation in North Korea is not a good one, and so we're very concerned about it," he said. "And one of the things I also want to mention is that we have aimed to implement the U.S.-DPRK food aid program according to the terms agreed to by the United States and the North Korean government in May 2008."

   The WFP said in December that North Korea will need more than 800,000 tons of additional food aid from abroad to feed its 21 million people this year despite a rather good harvest.

   The conservative Lee Myung-bak government of South Korea did not provide food aid to North Korea last year, demanding as a quid pro quo that the North make progress in the six-party talks on dismantling its nuclear weapons programs.

   Lee's liberal predecessors had provided 500,000 tons or so of food aid to North Korea every year over the past decade despite North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

   It is not likely the Lee administration will soon resume food aid to the North as inter-Korean relations plummeted to the lowest point in a decade as Pyongyang occasionally shut down communications and transportation between South Korea and the South's industrial complex in Kaesong, just north of the demilitarized zone dividing the two Koreas, seen as a symbol of the inter-Korean rapprochement of the past decade.

   Wood said the food aid to North Korea is humanitarian assistance that has nothing to do with the six-party talks.

   "I mean, clearly this is food assistance that the North Korean people need."

   The six-party talks are at a standstill as North Korea refused to agree to a verification protocol for its nuclear facilities in the latest round of talks in December.

   The Barack Obama administration has pledged to continue the multilateral denuclearization talks while concurrently pursuing more direct bilateral engagement.

   hdh@yna.co.kr
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