WASHINGTON -- The United States said Monday it does not have immediate plans for food aid to North Korea despite reports of the impoverished communist state suffering from severe food shortages due to poor harvests and management failure.
U.S. food aid to the North was suspended in early 2009 amid heightened tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests and controversy over the transparency of food distribution.
"We have no plans for a contribution at this time," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said.
Crowley was responding to the report that North Korea recently asked for food aid through the North Korean mission in the United Nations in New York.
The spokesman did not elaborate on whether Pyongyang actually asked for the food provision, just saying, "We talk to North Korea on a regular basis."
Crowley took issue with the transparency in the food distribution in the North.
"One of the sticking points in the past discussions we have with North Korea have always been confidence in the ability to ensure that humanitarian assistance provided get to those in need," he said. "Our policy regarding the provision of humanitarian assistance is based on the level of the need of given countries, and competing needs of other countries and our ability to ensure that the aid is reliably reaching the people in need. These are standards that we have traditionally applied to North Korea."
Food aid was suspended in early 2009 when North Korea refused to issue visas to Korean-speaking monitors, whose mission was to assure that the food was not funneled to the military and government elite.
The U.S. provided more than 2 million tons of food aid to the North over the past decade. (Yonhap)