The Bush administration on Friday announced an agreement to resume providing food aid to North Korea which faces a humanitarian crisis over severe food shortages.
President George W. Bush approved the plan to send 500,000 tonnes over the next year after Pyongyang agreed to an unprecedented monitoring system that would ensure ordinary North Koreans receive the aid.
Washington will channel 400,000 tonnes through the United Nation’s World Food Programme, and another 100,000 tonnes through US non-governmental organisations, including MercyCorps.
The US agency for international development on Friday unveiled the plan, which was first reported by the Financial Times earlier this week. The move would resume US government food aid to North Korea for the first time since 2005 when Washington suspended a previous programme.
Pyongyang has agreed to extensive monitoring to ensure the aid reaches the general population, and not just the elites who support the regime of Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader. This will include unprecedented random inspections, and “port to mouth” monitoring, according to US officials.
The WFP and relief organisations will be given access to more areas in North Korea than has been allowed under previous food aid programmes. Pyongyang has also eased some restrictions on the ability of Korean language speakers to join international relief teams.
Joseph Biden, the Democratic chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, expressed strong support for the agreement, which he said represented the “most comprehensive and transparent monitoring system ever accepted by the North Korean government.”
Washington intends to bring experts together in Pyongyang over the coming weeks to determine the kind of food that is needed, and exactly how it will be distributed. The first shipment of 50,000 tonnes is expected to arrive in early June, but will not be unloaded until the details of the distribution mechanism have been finalised.
The US agency for international development is expected to chose other NGOs prior to the meeting in Pyongyang. Humanitarian organisations have warned that North Korea faced a humanitarian crisis without food aid because of severe shortfalls. The UN estimates that the shortfall could be as much as 1.66m tonnes in 2008, although the US estimate is slightly lower at about 1.4m tonnes.
The move also comes as the US continues to work with North Korea towards completing the second stage of the six-party agreement aimed at denuclearising the Korean peninsula. US officials strongly dismiss suggestions that the food aid is aimed at enticing Pyongyang to cooperate on the nuclear issue.
South Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator said Friday that six-party talks were likely to be held next month.
”The talks are expected to be held in the first half of June, if consultations among related nations and preparations go well,” said Kim Sook.
Mr Kim will next week hold talks in Washington with his US and Japanese counterparts, following discussions in Beijing this week, to restart the multilateral talks after the eight-month hiatus.
He said the next round of six-party talks would be ”crucial but difficult” as the participants get to review the contents of Pyongyang’s pending declaration of its nuclear facilities and discuss ways of verifying them.
A government official familiar with the diplomatic process said that Washington thinks that the recent information given by North Korea about its nuclear programme is ”complete.” One senior US official said the Bush administration would need several weeks to pour over the more than 18,000 pages of often handwritten documents that North Korea recently handed over to the US.
Mr Kim said he expected Pyongyang would formally submit a long-due declaration of its nuclear activities soon and Washington would take steps to delist it as a terrorism-sponsoring nation and suspend a trade ban against the North by the end of this month.
“The US position as I understand it is that once they can make a preliminary assessment that the North fulfilled its commitment, then it will be taking those actions,” he said.
E-mail the reporter at: demetri.sevastopulo@ft.com
