SUNDAY, JUNE 22, 2003
S Korea agrees on $140 mn food aid to North
REUTERS
SEOUL: South Korea on Saturday endorsed a budget of 167.6 billion won ($140 million) for food aid to the communist North this year, despite the North's nuclear standoff with the United States.
The news came a week after both Koreas opened their heavily fortified border briefly for a symbolic reconnection of railroad links, a key project agreed at an inter-Korean summit in 2000 but delayed by diplomatic friction.
The secretive North, branded part of an "axis of evil" by US President George W. Bush along with Iran and pre-war Iraq, has been locked in a diplomatic standoff over its suspected nuclear weapons programme.
North and South ended their 1950-53 civil conflict with a ceasefire rather than a treaty, leaving the two sides technically still at war.
Drought and tropical storms have exacerbated North Korea's agricultural and industrial woes and the World Food Programme said the country needed around 1.1 million tonnes of grain this year, compared with 1.5 million tonnes last year.
The South will send the impoverished North 400,000 tonnes of rice, priced at $265 per tonne, on credit in 2003, the South's Unification Ministry said in a statement after the two sides agreed on the shipment in inter-Korea talks last month.
Pyongyang is obliged to pay for the rice over a period of 20 years starting 10 years after receiving the staple and at an interest rate of one percent, the same conditions as for food supplied in 2002 and 2000.
To ensure transparent distribution of the rice, South Korean officials were allowed to visit and photograph the distribution centres, the statement said.
"We expect the delivery to take place as early as the end of this month," said an official at the Unification Ministry, who declined to be named. "But it depends on weather conditions such as typhoons."
The ministry also agreed to spend 895 million won to support a new round of North-South family reunions, set for late June.
South Korea, which has a large rice surplus, said in March it would supply rice on credit to North Korea until 2005.
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