WASHINGTON ― The U.S. would consider any new request from North Korea to resume food aid stalled since 2009, provided Pyongyang allowed US staff inside the isolated country to monitor distribution.
“Our policy in providing humanitarian assistance is based on conditions of need,” U.S. ambassador Robert King, special envoy for North Korean human rights, told journalists on Monday.
“If there were a request for assistance it’s something I’m sure that we would look at,” King said.
But any such requests would have to be balanced against demands from other countries as well as US “ability to be monitor the delivery of that assistance.”
U.S. officials would also need to be allowed into the country to make their own assessment, as well as to monitor distribution, he added, speaking amid heightened tensions with the North which has unleashed a series of bellicose threats in recent weeks.
The U.S. last provided food aid to North Korea from late 2008 to March 2009. Some 170,000 tons out of an expected 500,000 tons of food aid was delivered, until Pyongyang expelled US workers monitoring the distribution.
Washington had not been able to monitor where some 22,000 tons of food had gone, King said. “They ended it. They said we’re through.”
The U.S. had been planning to resume the aid in April 2012, when Washington agreed to provide 240,000 metric tons of nutritional assistance to the communist state, in return for a promise to halt its nuclear activities including uranium enrichment and to allow in U.N. inspectors.
But those plans fell apart, amid broken promises from North Korea to halt its missile launches. King insisted however the suspension of food aid was not related to a collapsed deal on reining in the North’s nuclear program.
“When we made the decision to suspend our food assistance program it was based on our concern that we would not be able to monitor the distribution because the North Koreans had stepped back from agreements they had already reached,” King said.
Since then Pyongyang has not made any request for a resumption of aid, even as Washington seeks to bring the North back to the negotiating table for talks on its nuclear program.
Though recent reports by U.N. agencies have suggested the food crisis has eased, many North Koreans, especially in urban areas outside of Pyongyang, were still not getting enough protein in their diet, he said.
There are reports that Pyongyang may have requested food aid from Mongolia, something King could not confirm.
But he stressed: “Reports from a lot of organizations that operate in North Korea say conditions are fairly difficult ... the food situation is very tight.”
Meanwhile, a news report said Tuesday North Korea’s spring farm harvest is expected to exceed last year’s tally mainly due to favorable weather conditions, citing data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
According to the FAO data, output of barley, wheat and potatoes that can be harvested from June onwards will likely grow vis-a-vis the year before, Radio Free Asia said.
The report by the Washington-based media outlet also said the sowing of seeds for rice and corn, which make up 95 percent of North Korea’s grain production, is also moving forward without complications.
The RFA said that the FAO calculated that North Korea’s overall grain production rose 14 percent on-year in 2012, with this year’s number expected to go up as well. Despite such gains, the country is expected to suffer from a food shortage that may affect 2.8 million people out of a total population of about 24 million.
“The North needs to import at least 510,000 tons of grain this year to make up for the shortage, but so far it has brought in just 12,400 tons,” the news outlet said.
It said the U.N. organization has stressed that the next four months will be critical for the North because it can suffer from shortages ahead of the spring harvest, and there may be a need to receive aid from the international community.
The FAO predicted last month that the North’s grain output will fall shy by around 657,000 tons from what it needs to feed its people in 2013.
