Seven million Koreans facing starvation

The United Nations food agency warned yesterday that supplies for some seven million people, a third of North Korea's population, will run out early next month without furtheraid. The news could worsen the crisis over North Korea's nuclear threats.

"We only have firm commitments for 35,000 tons. This will be finished in early February, and then we might have to close shop," said Gerald Bourke, the spokesman for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Beijing. South Korea stopped food deliveries two months ago, after Pyongyang admitted running a secret nuclear weapons programme. Japan suspended aid after North Korea admitted kidnapping Japanese citizens.

The WFP has cut three million people off from its aid programme. The hardest-hit are townspeople who can expect to get only 270 grams a day through North Korea's public distribution system, half the standard emergency food ration. The UN scaled back its 2003 appeal for North Korea by 16 per cent, to 512,000 tons of grain, but only the European Union and Italy individually have so far responded.

North Korea has suffered from famine for a decade, and at least two million people have died of starvation. The US has been the largest contributor to emergency food deliveries over the past seven years which have fed nine million people a year. Although George Bush has said the US will not withhold food, the US Agency for International Development began insisting last June that North Korea meet the same conditions for aid that are mandatory elsewhere, such as providing a list of beneficiaries and unimpeded access for aid monitors. On this issue, however, as with efforts to defuse the nuclear crisis, there is deadlock.

Last month North Korea expelled International Atomic Energy Authority monitors and restarted its Yongbyon plant, signalling its intention to build a nuclear arsenal. As the regime slips further into isolation, with just two flights a week to Pyongyang, South Korea has begun a round of diplomatic meetings to find a solution. It held talks yesterday in Moscow and has also dispatched a mission to Washington.

According to a South Korean newspaper, Munhwa Ilbo, Seoul is presenting a "three-stage" mediation proposal – a US guarantee of the North's security and fuel oil supplies in return for an end to the nuclear weapons programme; international economic assistance; and a multinational security guarantee for the North, including from China and Russia.

But the Bush administration has repeated that it will not negotiate another deal with North Korea, which it says cheated on a 1994 pact. "We have no intention to sit down and bargain again, to pay for this horse again," said the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher. "We are not entering into negotiations ... to get them to commit to something that they've already committed to."

North Korea blames the US for the dispute, which it said yesterday was serious and unpredictable. Its ambassador to China repeated demands that Washington agree to a non-aggression treaty.