 US food aid ship arrives in DPRK
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-01 07:58 A US ship carrying thousands of tons of food arrived in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) after the nation agreed to open up to greatly expanded international aid, the UN food agency said yesterday. The World Food Program said the freighter arrived on Sunday carrying 37,000 tons of wheat, the first installment of 500,000 tons in assistance promised by Washington. The US aid was not directly related to the ongoing nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang, and US officials have repeatedly claimed they do not use food for diplomatic coercion. But the shipment arrived just days after the DPRK delivered a long-delayed atomic declaration and blew up the cooling tower at its main reactor site, in a sign of its commitment not to make more plutonium for bombs. In exchange, Washington lifted some economic sanctions against the North and said it would remove the country from a US State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism. DPRK agreed to the new aid program on Friday, the WFP said, the same day Pyongyang blew up the reactor tower following the US concessions. The American food supplies will help the WFP expand its operations to feed more than 5 million people, up from the current 1.2 million DPRK people helped by outside handouts, the organization said in a statement. American relief groups will distribute 100,000 tons of the food in two northwestern provinces, and the WFP the rest. The US is the largest donor to the WFP's current aid program in DPRK, having pledged $38.9 million. The increased aid comes as the WFP and other groups have issued increasingly dire warnings about the food situation in the country. The country's regular annual shortages were expected to worsen this year because of floods last summer that decimated the DPRK's agricultural heartland. The UN Food and Agricultural Organization has said DPRK's cereal crop will fall more than 1.5 million tons short this year, the largest food deficit since 2001. UN agencies are conducting a food survey expected to be complete mid-July to determine where to distribute the aid, but the WFP said preliminary reports "indicate a high level of food insecurity." Jean-Pierre de Margerie, DPRK country director for the WFP, said observers had not yet seen evidence of a renewed famine. The WFP hopes to start distributing the US-provided food within two weeks, de Margerie said. The new aid agreement marks a return by the WFP to its earlier levels of assistance, but also with greater access to parts of the country where the agency has not previously worked, de Margerie said. DPRK has also allowed the WFP to send some 50 more international workers to the country for monitoring, its largest staff presence since starting operations there in 1996. Agencies (China Daily 07/01/2008 page12) |
