-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! N. Korea says it's facing another famine Free Email Offers Delivered to Your Inbox! Win a $500 Shopping Spree Earn $100K per year from home! FREE DEBT ANALYSIS! $25,000 from GeckoPrizes! Free updates on the latest movies! Win $5000 from Lifeminders! Save 70% on Life Insurance Free Debt Analysis! NextCard - Low APR/No Annual Fee! Win $11,000,000 Tonight! Speed up your Internet! MyPoints: Get Paid to Surf My email address is: Saturday, 5 May 2001 12:51 (ET) N. Korea says it's facing another famine By CHARLES LEE SEOUL, South Korea, May 5 (UPI) -- North Korea on Saturday acknowledged it was facing another year of drought that could result in famine, an announcement that appeared to be aimed at wooing foreign donors in the wake of a visit to the impoverished country by a European Union delegation. The announcement, carried by state media along with supporting scientific data, forecast a dire outlook for the country. "Crops in the Democratic Republic of Korea are badly affected by a long spell of drought," said the North's Korean Central News Agency. Drought has persisted for 58 days in most parts of the country's northern provinces, doing "huge damage to various fields of the national economy," the agency said. "Results of the soil survey showed that 8- to 15-centimeter-deep soil on farmland in all parts of the country remains dry, going far beyond the germination limit. Most of the sown seeds have already dried up." The report came just after Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson traveled the communist country as head of a high-level EU delegation. The Europeans discussed economic cooperation and relief aid to the famine-stricken North, among other matters. Persson told journalists that North Korean officials were "obviously worried" about the country's devastated economy. "They are aware of the grave situation but they are, as I could understand it, committed to go on with opening up for more international cooperation." he said. The EU delegation offered the North fertilizer and agricultural equipment, but also asked for a lifting of restrictions on aid groups assisting North Korea through its chronic food shortages and economic hardships. International relief workers are still barred from reaching areas in the North deemed important to national security, particularly along the heavily armed border with South Korea. A German doctor, who was thrown out of North Korea in January for criticizing human rights abuses, accused Pyongyang of distorting information on its food crisis in order to get more international help. "Nobody knows for sure where the food aid has gone. Food could be diverted to high-ranking people or soldiers," said Dr. Norbert Vollersten, a volunteer for German Emergency Doctors, a nonprofit aid group. The United Nations World Food Program said last month that North Korea was facing new food shortages that could be as bad as 1996 and 1997, the peak of the near-famine conditions of the past 10 years. Lack of fertilizer and a spring drought led to last fall's poor harvest, which supplied only 3 million of the 4.8 million tons of grain that North Korea's 23 million people need to feed themselves, the agency said. Aid agencies said up to 2 million people have died in North Korea since 1995 when a series of natural disasters, compounded by mismanagement in the state-run farm system, triggered famine conditions. South Korea has been shipping 200,000 tons of free fertilizer to North Korea to be used for the rice-planting season this month. -- *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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