- 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 further aid. The news could worsen
the crisis over North Korea's nuclear threats.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- According to a South Korean newspaper, Munhwa Ilbo, Seoul
is presenting a "three-stage" mediation proposal ö 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=366462
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