- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
Bush administration plans to continue humanitarian food shipments to North
Koreain the new year, despite what President Bush has called a "diplomatic
showdown" over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, U.S. officials said.
-
- "We expect to continue providing the same level
of aid to the (United Nations) World Food Program in Korea as we have in
the past," a senior administration official said on Tuesday in reply
to written questions from Reuters. "We don't use food as a political
weapon."
-
- In the past, the United States has argued that humanitarian
food aid should be isolated from geo-strategic considerations -- an idea
summed up by former President Ronald Reagan's dictum that "a hungry
child knows no politics."
-
- But the timing of a U.S. food-aid announcement was up
in the air while Washington pressed to reverse the North's recent steps
toward restarting a nuclear program frozen in a 1994 non-proliferation
deal with the United States.
-
- The aid would come at a time the reclusive Communist
state -- long considered by Washington as one of its most dangerous enemies
-- is perhaps more vulnerable to outside pressure than ever.
-
- In the mid- to late-1990s, as many as 2.5 million North
Koreans, or about 10 percent of the population, are estimated to have died
in a famine.
-
- In a Dec. 3 appeal, the U.N. agency urged donor nations
to help feed 6.4 million of the "particularly vulnerable" of
North Korea's 22 million people as part of a $201 million emergency operation
for 2003.
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- CHILDREN, ELDERLY, PREGNANT TO BENEFIT
-
- The main beneficiaries would be children from six months
to 10 years old, pregnant and nursing women, the elderly and those particularly
affected by natural disasters and the country's dire economic straits,
said Rick Corsino, the group's country director for North Korea.
-
- The senior official who responded to Reuters' queries
said the administration did not yet know how much it would contribute until
the fiscal 2004 budget was completed. It is due to be sent to Congress
next month.
-
- Rep. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican who toured North
Korea in the 1990s as a House International Relations Committee staff member
before he was elected, said North Korea's behavior had already lost it
food aid from Japan and Europe.
-
- "No matter how incompetent the regime may be, it's
critical that we step in to save the next generation," he said, adding
that the administration was loath to make a food aid announcement in the
same week that Pyongyang was expelling the last two U.N. nuclear monitors.
-
- Bush drew a sharp distinction on Tuesday between the
standoff with North Korea and his conflict with Iraq, saying he believed
Pyongyang could be persuaded to back down.
-
- "I believe this is not a military showdown; this
is a diplomatic showdown," he said. "We can resolve this peacefully."
-
- The administration is working with China, Russia, Japan,
South Korea and others to influence North Korea, which has become dependent
on international aid for its survival.
-
- "We are the biggest food provider to the people
of North Korea as part of the World Food Program," Secretary of State
Colin Powell said in a television interview on Sunday. "So we have
no ill intent."
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