By Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL (Reuters) - The U.N. World Food Programme, which haswarned of a humanitarian crisis in North Korea due to a foodshortage, said on Monday it reached a deal with Pyongyang torapidly expand aid, and that a U.S. ship carrying wheat hadarrived.
Flooding last year, higher commodity prices and politicalwrangling with major donor South Korea have pushed North Koreato a food shortfall similar to ones it faced about a decade agowhen famine killed an estimated 1 million people, experts havesaid.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said the agreement itreached with the North will allow it to expand its operation,previously aimed at feeding 1.2 million people, to feed morethan 5 million in the country of about 23 million.
"It will make all the difference in the world to those 3 or4 million or people who are now going to get food aid who werenot getting it before and didn't have enough to eat," said TonyBanbury, WFP Asia regional director.
North Korea also allowed the WFP to place moreinternational aid workers on the ground and expand itsoperations to a greater number of counties in the impoverishedcountry. The WFP estimates as many as 6 million North Koreansneed food aid.
The aid deal and arrival of U.S. help come days after NorthKorea made a symbolic commitment to an internationaldisarmament pact by blowing up the cooling tower at itsplutonium-producing nuclear plant, and provided documents onits nuclear programmes.
The United States said in May it would provide 500,000tonnes of food to North Korea in a sign of improvingcooperation. Washington will supply 400,000 tonnes via the WFPwhile U.S. non-governmental organisations will distribute100,000 tonnes.
The WFP said the first U.S. ship carrying aid arrived onSunday in Nampo, a port that serves Pyongyang, with a cargo of37,000 tonnes of wheat.
U.S. policy is not to use food as a weapon or a reward.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation said in lateMarch it expects North Korea to have a shortfall of about 1.66million tonnes in cereals for the year ending in October 2008,the largest deficit in about seven years.
South Korea usually sends about 400,000 tonnes of rice anda hefty amount of fertiliser a year to North Korea but has notsent the aid this year as ties soured between the two whenPresident Lee Myung-bak took office in February and promised atough line toward Pyongyang.
North Korea has branded conservative Lee "a traitor to thenation" over his calls to restrict the free flow of aid theNorth had seen under his liberal predecessors and to tiehandouts to how well the North lives up to the nuclear deal.
North Korea has rejected an offer from the Lee governmentto provide 50,000 tonnes of corn aid pledged to Pyongyang underLee's predecessor, the South's Unification Ministry said onMonday. Lee has said he would provide help if requested by theNorth.
The WFP's Banbury said by telephone from Bangkok that theNorth's harvest this year is likely to be hit by the lack offertiliser.
The WFP is taking part in a survey on food and nutrition inNorth Korea, with results expected in mid-July. Early findingspaint a bleak picture.
"The situation is dire for millions of people in thecountry," Banbury said.
(Additional reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by JonathanHopfner and Jerry Norton)
