North Koreans stand to lose food rations

BEIJING -- Food rations for more than three million hungry North Koreans will end within weeks in mid-winter because the country's leaders refuse to let donor nations adequately monitor how food aid is delivered, the chief of the United Nations World Food Program said Saturday.

"Progress is seriously at risk, especially to feed children," said James T. Morris, the U.S. executive who now heads the U.N. food agency. "It's a very serious problem."

Sometime in January, Morris told reporters in Beijing, emergency food handouts to three million North Koreans will halt, and by February 3.8 million of North Korea's 23 million citizens may find their food assistance cut off.

The suspension will cripple a program that has provided famished North Koreans each with about 10.5 ounces of cereal per day. That's less than half of a basic survival ration but enough to have reduced North Korea's high rate of severe malnutrition.

Morris said the World Food Program has made "enormous progress" in North Korea since it began providing food to the nation's starving in 1995, following a famine that experts say may have killed two million people. A recent U.N. survey shows that the percentage of acutely malnourished children since 1998 has dropped from 16 percent to nine percent.

But donor countries are wary of giving money that must be channeled through a government that does not open doors to monitoring efforts, Morris said. "We've been asking for a list of the hospitals and the orphanages and the schools and the other institutions that receive our food. We simply want a list of where our food is going," Morris said. "For two years, they've not been able to give us that list."

Lacking clarity on who's getting the food, the Rome-based agency has been able to raise only 60 percent of the funds for its $200 million program for North Korea this year, Morris said.

"This is a basic issue of credibility and confidence with our donors. They want to know where our food is going," he said.

Washington has reduced its food commitment to the North Korea program from 155,000 metric tons to 40,000 tons this year, Morris said, although "we're in the process of discussing a significant additional gift."

Some U.S. legislators and Bush administration officials believe Pyongyang diverts food from hungry civilians to ensure that North Korea's army is well fed.

"The American people will not tolerate food aid being skimmed by the North Korean regime for its army and the elites. We must be able to verify and monitor the distribution of food in all parts of North Korea," Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., told a Senate foreign relations subcommittee in early November.

Morris predicted donor nations would respond promptly and generously were North Korea to be more open.

Morris is in Beijing for talks on closing the last World Food Program serving China.

"China simply doesn't need aid today as it did 25 years ago," Morris said, "and that's something to celebrate."

The World Food Program feeds 110 million people in some 80 countries around the globe, and all recipient countries except North Korea allow the U.N. program to independently ensure that food aid reaches the famished, particularly mothers and children, Morris said.

He noted some improvement in the access given to World Food Program officials in North Korea. The officials now make an average of 510 monitoring visits a month, and can go to markets and carry satellite communications equipment. But the government still must sign off on every visit, and normally sends minders to tag along, he said.

"Nowhere else in the world do we have that kind of process in play," he said.

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