U.S. to give food aid to North Korea

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
1

The biggest donar in he world, the United States, even feeds the country it deems it’s enemy. May Allah continue to bless America.
…

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Wednesday it would give North Korea 50,000 tonnes of food aid, a gesture analysts said may help bring the impoverished state back to talks on ending its suspected nuclear arms programs.

The offer of food aid, which the State Department described as a humanitarian gesture, follows positive statements by North Korea and hints from Asian officials Pyongyang may be ready to resume six-party talks on giving up its nuclear ambitions.

The State Department said political factors do not affect food aid decisions and denied the latest offer aimed to bring North Korea back to talks with South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia last held a year ago on Thursday.

North Korea, which in February said it had nuclear arms, has softened its tone recently and its leader, Kim Jong-il, was quoted last week as saying his nation was willing to end its boycott of the talks if the United States showed it respect.

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli announced that the United States would offer North Korea 50,000 metric tonnes of “agricultural commodities” through the U.N. World Food Program, saying “it is a humanitarian act based on need and not based on political considerations and not linked to six party talks.”

Ereli said the United States gave North Korea 50,000 tonnes last year and 100,000 tonnes the year before.

Historically, the United States has said its food aid to North Korea is based on Pyongyang’s need for food, competing needs elsewhere, and the ability to monitor the distribution of food in North Korea. Ereli suggested long-standing concerns about the inability to monitor distribution may be abating.

“The World Food Program is attempting to implement a new approach to monitoring that … would make diversion easier to detect,” he said. “The (WFP) reports that so far North Korea is cooperating with the new approach and, in addition, North Korea has now reversed most of the newly imposed restrictions.”

“That’s what motivated this, not politics,” he said.

Earlier, Wang Jiarui, a top Chinese Communist Party official, told Reuters in Beijing he believed North Korea wanted to resume the talks and this could happen in July, but he added patience was needed.

Joseph Cirincione, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace nonproliferation expert, said it was hard not to suspect the food aid was aimed partly to improve the outlook for talks.

“It’s hard to believe the timing is just coincidental,” he said, saying the U.S. decision to offer the aid and any North Korean decision to remove obstacles to its monitoring distribution “shows greater flexibility by both states.”

Jack Pritchard, a former U.S. special envoy for negotiations with North Korea, said the Bush administration had been rigorous in basing aid decisions on humanitarian factors but said it could not be unaware of the diplomatic upside.

“To suggest that there is somehow blind justice involved here and the administration doesn’t understand the positive bounce (they) are going to get politically, particularly with the South Koreans and the Chinese, would be naive,” he said.

Pritchard said the food aid would allow the Chinese and the South Koreans to make the case to North Korea it should respond to the U.S. gesture by resuming talks.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-06-23T014419Z_01_FOR306232_RTRUKOC_0_KOREA-NORTH-USA.xml

2

Re: U.S. to give food aid to North Korea

The US is now acting like a [edit]

THey were talking about invading and stuff, and when the koreans say they have nookes, then the Us acts like a [edit] and says they will do what ever the Koreans want them to do.

THat is exactly why nookes work at stopping the gora b!tchin.

MAN-O-SALWA
MAN-O-SALWA
3

Re: U.S. to give food aid to North Korea

Bad idea by the USA. See my “Ethics of food aid” thread.

http://www.paklinks.com/gs/showthread.php?t=184394

Giving food aid to North Koreans lowers the amount of dissent they will have at their government, and continues to make North Korea feasible as a state.

As Mary Antoinette said: Let them eat cake.

4

Re: U.S. to give food aid to North Korea

Maddy,

That was actually a good thread, however simply waiting for a tipping point has proven to be a waste of time. All the compassionate lefties though that sanctions were the humane thing to do in Iraq, as opposed to war. Regimes have learned how to manipulate and control the level of totalitarian rhetoric to a point where outsiders are laways blamed and ruthless regimes stay in power.

The fact of the matter is that the harvest in North Korea promises to be one of the worst on record anyway. The weather this spring was terrible, and it delayed the rice tranplantation a number of weeks. To get all of the rice in the ground the North Koreans sent office workers and soldiers into the countryside to get the rice in the ground once the ground had warmed sufficiently. South Korea has only privided half of the fertilizer requested, and rains over the past few years have been much more monsoon-like, washing away a lot of prime soil. High oil prices have meant that many tractors and farm equipment lies idle, as the North Koreans can not afford as much oil as in prior years.

All tolled, the contribution from the United States will not even make up for the shortfalls due to these factors. The period from now til the harvest is historically low point for food stocks. WFP notes that bulk stock supplies ran out far earlier than previous years. So the US has only partially filled an ever deepening hole. Additionally NK is experimenting with market based economic reforms. The result is that prices for rice have largely tripled, and the poor can barely afford minimum requirements, while the elite are doing well. There is more than enough room for discontent, and plenty of dissillusioned masses. Whether they will rise up is a completely different matter.

5

Re: U.S. to give food aid to North Korea

Ohioguy, the last thing I would propose would be the kind of devestating sanctions on North Korea that were so unjustly inflicted on the Iraqi people by the US government and its allies.

Sanctions deliberately target the people.

The emphasis in my thread was that proactive food aid is a bad idea because it prolongs dictatorships by lowering dissatifaction.

North Korea must be given the option and right to buy US food at fair market prices. However, North Korea must not be donated US food.

Donations of food allow the Little Kim government to continue wasting its money on huge armies and air forces and nuclear programmes whilst the people go hungry.

If NK had to face the choice of spending its weapons on guns or bread, picking the latter would force it to spend money more realistically and responsibly; picking the former would make the people starve, die, and more revolutionary.

6

Re: U.S. to give food aid to North Korea

This situation is precisely analogous to Saddam. Except Lil Kim has no oil. In every other regard, this situation is precisely the same. No one thought the Saddam regime would survive the sanctions, but he rewrote the playbook for belligerent dictators. If a dictator is ruthless enough he can susvive anything. That is the lesson Saddam tought the world.

North Korea today exists on a thread. The collapse of society there would have starving millions running through minefields to the south. Unlike the collapse of East Germany, where West Germany nurtured the economy to health, the Generals and the army of North Korea are so brainwashed that they would do desperate things to their own people, and probably to whom ever they could lash out at. If it is going to happen, it will happen when the food stocks are at thier lowest, a few months from now.

7

Re: U.S. to give food aid to North Korea

When there is not even enough food left to feed the army, the army itself will turn on little Kim.

Frankly, the only way to fix north korea is for the whole system to break down. Helping the people cannot be done without helping the NK government stay in power.

8

Re: U.S. to give food aid to North Korea

It is like you snatch $100 from me and give back $1 and call it aid.

Who is Bilal Butt?