Global Policy Forum

By Barbara Crossette

United Nations - A report prepared for Congress by the General Accounting Office in Washington has found that the U.N. World Food Program is not able to monitor adequately what happens to food aid donated by the United States to North Korea. "U.S. policy is that no food aid will be provided to North Korea if it cannot be adequately monitored," the report, to the House Committee on International Relations, said. The report, issued last week, contends that the World Food Program itself estimates that 90 percent of North Korean institutions that receive food aid, including hospitals, orphanages and schools, have not been visited and says its own monitors had "rarely been allowed to observe the actual distribution of food to beneficiaries."

A renewed debate over whether food donations, most of which are from the United States, are siphoned off by officials or the military in the world's most isolated and totalitarian nation occurs as Congress begins hearings on the Clinton administration policy of easing some sanctions against North Korea in the hopes of deterring its nuclear and missile programs. The policy has met strong Republican criticism.

Malnutrition and starvation have been a cause for concern in North Korea for more than five years, as the effects of the country's complete economic collapse have been worsened by floods and other disasters. Experts disagree on the death toll from the years of famine, but estimates range from 500,000 to 2 million or more. North Korea has 24 million people, and most famine victims were the youngest and oldest citizens, international experts say.

A spokesman for the World Food Program, Trevor Rowe, said in an interview from Washington that "for us, there is nothing new in this report." He said there had always been questions about access to North Korean people and institutions. The GAO team was itself denied visas. Rowe said access for his program had in fact expanded considerably in North Korea in recent years.

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