U.S. plans to send officials to N.K. to secure distribution transparency

By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (Yonhap) -- The State Department said Tuesday it plans to send
a group of officials to North Korea to assure transparency in the distribution of
food aid to North Korea as a prerequisite to implementing its pledge to funnel up
to 500,000 tons of food.

"So we're going to try to send some additional personnel to North Korea in an
effort to make it work so that we can assure ourselves that we are fulfilling
those dual responsibilities," spokesman Sean McCormack said.
He was talking about the difficulty in both securing transparency in the food
distribution and meeting the urgent humanitarian needs of the impoverished
communist state. The U.S. wants the food to go to the truly needy rather than the
power elite or black market.
The U.S. in May pledged to provide up to 500,000 tons of food aid to the North,
but has delivered about a quarter.
The last shipment was made in August as North Korea halted the disablement of its
nuclear facilities in defiance of Washington's failure to delist it as a state
sponsor of terrorism.
Once off the list, the North resumed disabling its facilities in October, but
talks are still under way on how to verify what the North declared as its nuclear
facilities in June as part of the multilateral aid-for-denuclearization
agreement.
"We have dual responsibilities here. We feel as though we have a responsibility
to try to address the humanitarian issue, that is, hungry people in North Korea;
put aside political differences that we have," McCormack said in a daily news
briefing.
"We also have a responsibility to be good stewards of the resources the American
taxpayers are devoting to this issue, addressing this humanitarian crisis," he
said. "The bottom line there is making sure that hungry people get the food that
has been designated for them."
The spokesman said nobody in his government "has an interest in using people who
are hungry as bargaining chips.
"That's not what we're doing. We have an ongoing -- again, it's an ongoing
process of trying to make this work. And part of this, I think, involves more
people," he said.
The World Food Program announced Monday that North Korea will need more than
800,000 tons in additional food aid from abroad to feed its 21 million people
next year despite a rather good harvest this year.
South Korea, one of two major food donors to the North along with the U.S., has
shipped no food aid to the North since early this year, when the conservative Lee
Myung-bak government took office.
Lee's liberal predecessors had provided more than 400,000 tons of food and as
much fertilizer to the North annually virtually unconditionally for the past
decade.
Lee says he will link economic and other inter-Korean cooperation projects to
North Korea's denuclearization.
South Korean officials said North Korea is not in a dire situation requiring
emergency food aid, although it is ready to discuss such aid if the North makes a
request.
hdh@yna.co.kr
(END)