Seven million Koreans
facing starvation
independent.co.uk
By Jasper Becker in Beijing
05 January 2003
The United Nations food agency warned
yesterday that supplies for some seven million
people, a third of North Korea's population, will
run out early next month without furtheraid. The
news could worsen the crisis over North
Korea's nuclear threats.
"We only have firm commitments for 35,000 tons.
This will be finished in early February, and then
we might have to close shop," said Gerald
Bourke, the spokesman for the UN World Food
Programme (WFP) in Beijing. South Korea
stopped food deliveries two months ago, after
Pyongyang admitted running a secret nuclear
weapons programme. Japan suspended aid
after North Korea admitted kidnapping Japanese
citizens.
The WFP has cut three million people off from its
aid programme. The hardest-hit are townspeople
who can expect to get only 270 grams a day
through North Korea's public distribution system,
half the standard emergency food ration. The UN
scaled back its 2003 appeal for North Korea by
16 per cent, to 512,000 tons of grain, but only
the European Union and Italy individually have so
far responded.
North Korea has suffered from famine for a
decade, and at least two million people have died
of starvation. The US has been the largest
contributor to emergency food deliveries over
the past seven years which have fed nine million
people a year. Although George Bush has said
the US will not withhold food, the US Agency for
International Development began insisting last
June that North Korea meet the same conditions
for aid that are mandatory elsewhere, such as
providing a list of beneficiaries and unimpeded
access for aid monitors. On this issue, however,
as with efforts to defuse the nuclear crisis,
there is deadlock.
Last month North Korea expelled International
Atomic Energy Authority monitors and restarted
its Yongbyon plant, signalling its intention to build
a nuclear arsenal. As the regime slips further
into isolation, with just two flights a week to
Pyongyang, South Korea has begun a round of
diplomatic meetings to find a solution. It held talks
yesterday in Moscow and has also dispatched a
mission to Washington.
According to a South Korean newspaper,
Munhwa Ilbo, Seoul is presenting a "three-stage"
mediation proposal - a US guarantee of the North's security and fuel oil supplies in
return for an end to the nuclear weapons programme; international economic
assistance; and a multinational security guarantee for the North, including from
China and Russia.
But the Bush administration has repeated that it will not negotiate another deal with
North Korea, which it says cheated on a 1994 pact. "We have no intention to sit
down and bargain again, to pay for this horse again," said the State Department
spokesman, Richard Boucher. "We are not entering into negotiations ... to get them
to commit to something that they've already committed to."
North Korea blames the US for the dispute, which it said yesterday was serious
and unpredictable. Its ambassador to China repeated demands that Washington
agree to a non-aggression treaty. |
