[USFK Forums] WFP officials in North Korea for talks on food aid [Reuters]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Wednesday, March 15, 2006

WFP officials in North Korea for talks on food aid

14 Mar 2006 07:08:00 GMT

BEIJING, March 14 (Reuters) - Officials from the World Food Programme flew into Pyongyang on Tuesday for talks on resuming aid to North Korea that would feed millions in the impoverished country.

The U.N. agency began working in North Korea in the mid-1990s after a famine that killed as many as 2.5 million people, but ended emergency food deliveries late last year over disagreements on conditions for supplying the aid.

The WFP's board in Rome approved in principle a new $102 million, two-year programme in February, but its donors are demanding more foreign staff and better access for monitoring before they resume funding.

"The donors on the executive board expressed pretty serious concern about the operating conditions that were on offer and gave us a mandate to try and better them,"

WFP spokesman Gerald Bourke said in Beijing where he is based. "While they have approved the operation in principle, it still has to be funded and resourced," he said.

During its 10 years in North Korea, the WFP grew into its biggest humanitarian agency and one of the few windows to the outside world for the isolated country.

But last September Pyongyang announced it wanted food aid curtailed, a move analysts said was aimed at curbing a foreign presence the government saw as intrusive.

South Korea and China provide North Korea shipments of staples like grain and fertiliser with fewer checks and conditions.

The new WFP programme, which was to have started on April 1 but now will almost certainly be delayed, would provide 150,000 tonnes of food to nearly 2 million women and young children. "Until donors are happy, they're not going to be too inclined to resource the operation," Bourke said.



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