UN urges US to unlock North Korea food aid
Date: 18-Dec-03
Country: ITALY
Author: David Brough
The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) this week announced a new $171 million emergency operation that aims to feed 6.5 million North Koreans suffering from the impact of floods, drought, a lack of fertile farmland and economic crisis following the loss of support from the former Soviet Union.
In February, the United States pledged to give North Korea 40,000 tonnes of food aid, with another 60,000 tonnes depending in part on whether Pyongyang let donors track its distribution and provided access to all vulnerable groups in the country.
"We had hoped to receive 100,000 tonnes, but negotiations are still going on with Washington on the remaining 60,000 tonnes," Jean-Jacques Graisse, Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), told Reuters.
The U.S. State Department said on Thursday it had still not decided whether to release the remaining tranche of aid.
"We are considering that extra chunk of 2003 assistance right now," spokesman Richard Boucher said.
Graisse said Rome-based WFP had sent a letter to the U.S. government a few weeks ago to ask U.S. authorities to release the outstanding 60,000 tonnes of aid.
"There has been some dissatisfaction expressed in Washington, which is in line with our own dissatisfaction, with the lack of similar facilities granted to us in North Korea as we receive in other countries," Graisse said.
He was referring to restrictions on WFP's access to hungry people in North Korea. Authorities have allowed WFP to deliver food to 163 of the country's 206 counties, representing about 85 percent of the country's population.
"We do not have the capacity to do monitoring in the usual classical way - in other words, we have to announce our visits," Graisse said. "That is for us a problem."
He added, "We cannot guarantee everywhere that the food is going exactly to those institutions for which it is intended in the quantities for which it is intended."
WFP aid workers operating around the world do not usually have to advise authorities before handing out food aid.
Graisse said North Korean authorities had very rarely denied WFP requests to deliver food aid.
North Korea had denied some WFP requests to use advanced telecommunications equipment, aggravating medical risks for staff in case of accidents in remote areas, he added.
But the authorities had made some recent concessions over WFP's use of mobile phones and medical airlifts, he said.
WFP's sister agency, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), appealed this week for $3.5 million for agricultural projects to produce food for nearly two million people living in rural areas of North Korea.
