U.S. withholds food aid for the North Koreans Steven R. Weisman/NYT The New York Times Monday, January 6, 2003 UN body warns of a 'suffering population'
WASHINGTON For months, President George W. Bush has pledged not to use food as a weapon against North Korea. But as the confrontation deepens over the country's nuclear weapons program, the United States has continued to withhold approval of grain shipments sought by humanitarian groups to avert starvation on the Korean Peninsula. . The World Food Program, an arm of the United Nations, says that food aid suspensions by the United States and Japan, and severe cutbacks by South Korea, have meant that for the first time in many years, it will miss its food-distribution targets in North Korea this winter "by a wide margin." . "We're very concerned about it," a World Food Program official said. "We understand that there are political considerations. But this is a population that is suffering, with women and children the most vulnerable." . The Bush administration says it has been withholding food, not to pressure North Korea, but because of lapses in the mechanisms monitoring where it gets distributed. . "Our intention is to go forward, but we do need to solve these monitoring problems first," an administration official said. He added that food could not be distributed until Congress approves the State Department budget for it this year. . But World Food Program officials say that they have "no hard evidence" that food intended for starving civilians has been diverted for other uses, such as the military. . "We have relatively good confidence that the food is reaching the people who need it," he said. . Whatever the reasons for it, the food crisis has thrust itself into the middle of urgent meetings by the United States and its regional allies - China, Japan, Russia and South Korea - on how to handle North Korea's decision to reactivate its nuclear weapons program. . Senior U.S., Japanese and South Korean envoys are to meet in Washington on Monday to decide the next steps, including whether, and by what means, to reach out diplomatically to North Korea to head off its nuclear weapons buildup - and whether to tighten or ease the economic pressures on it. . On the food issue, diplomats say there will be pressure on the United States to avoid a new round of pressure on President Kim Jong Il, who has nonetheless not voiced any views on the matter. Although South Korea has cut back its food shipments, officials in Seoul criticized the Bush administration for forcing an early cutoff of fuel oil shipments to North Korea last year, even though the shipments had been arranged as part of the 1994 agreement, now broken, under which North Korea agreed not to make nuclear weapons. . In a separate action, the International Atomic Energy Agency is to meet Monday to discuss what to do about North Korea's dismantling of the inspections equipment at its nuclear reactor at Yongbyan, where weapons-grade plutonium is manufactured and possibly used for at least two nuclear weapons. . Agency inspectors were expelled from North Korea at the end of 2002, raising anxiety throughout the West and complicating U.S. attempts to mobilize a worldwide coalition against Iraq, whose nuclear weapons program is considered far less advanced. . The three-way negotiations in Washington have been roiled, in part, by the fact that South Korea is undergoing a political transition, with President Kim Dae Jung preparing to yield power next month to his successor, Roh Moo Hyun. . Both are strong advocates of maintaining diplomatic and economic ties with North Korea. In the last few days, Roh's advisers have begun floating ideas about how to break the impasse that has arisen over the U.S. policy of not negotiating with North Korea until it disavows its nuclear program, and Roh's call for such negotiations. One of Roh's transition advisers said last week that the incoming president wants the United States to go along with a proposal by North Korea that the United States commit itself to a nonaggression pact, as part of a deal in which Pyongyang would back away from its nuclear program. . In Washington, Bush administration officials have not rejected this idea out of hand. The president, they noted, has repeatedly declared that the United States had no intention of attacking North Korea. Therefore, they said, some agreement of nonaggression might well be part of an eventual deal on weapons. _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
