US provides food aid to North Korea
The US will provide 50,000 metric tons of food to North Korea in a humanitarian decision that the Bush administration said is unrelated to stalemated efforts to get Pyongyang to end its nuclear weapons programme.
Trying to ease the needs of the North Korean people and efforts to halt the weapons programme are not linked, US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said today.
The Bush administration made a similar decision in July of last year, so the timing of today’s announcement was pretty much routine. The year before, the administration donated 100,000 tons.
All of these donations were made as the US and North Korea jostled over the weapons issue, as they still do.
North Korea indicated earlier this month that it was ready to resume talks with the US and four other countries – Russia, China, Japan and South Korea - but no date has been set for that.
At the White House, press secretary Scott McClellan said: “We’ve been a big supplier of food to the North Korean people and the president has said that he does not believe that food should be used as a diplomatic weapon.”
“We have always had concerns, though, that that food is getting to the people who need it – the people who are starving, the people who are hungry,” McClellan added.
“We want to make sure there are assurances that that food is going to those who need it – not to the government and not to the military in North Korea,” he said.
