Impeach Bush

US to give North Korea Aid
Reuters/Yahoo News
Mark Felsenthal
Thu Dec 25,12:11 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will give additional food aid to North Korea after U.N. officials reported fewer obstacles to tracking distribution, the State Department said on Wednesday.

The United States will donate an additional 60,000 metric tons of agricultural commodities to North Korea through the U.N. World Food Program, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in a statement.

The promise of more aid comes as Chinese and U.S. officials met earlier this week in Beijing to discuss how to move forward on six-way negotiations to curtail North Korea's nuclear arms program. The aid is not linked to the talks, State Department spokeswoman Brenda Greenberg said.

"We will not provide inducements to North Korea to get them to come to the talks," Greenberg said.

World Food Program Executive Director James Morris last week made an emergency appeal for $171 million worth of rations to feed North Koreans to offset a drop in contributions.

Boucher said the United States had decided to release the additional aid to meet greater need as winter approaches.

Also, Morris has reported fewer obstacles to tracking contributions, including "access to one more district, an increase in the average number of monitoring visits per month, and obtaining official and unofficial wage and price information," Boucher said.

The additional contribution brings total U.S. food aid to North Korea this year to 100,000 tons. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in February the United States would give North Korea food aid this year, but cut the amount to between 40,000 and 100,000 tons and tied the final amount in part to allowing donors to track distribution.

Powell said the amount was lower than last year's 157,000 tons because the World Food Program had asked for less aid and because other nations were expected to boost their donations.

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Commentary:
Another Bush flip-flop. Bush said he wouldn't give aid to North Korea after they said they had nukes but now we learn he lied to us again. Why isn't the media telling you Bush lied and flip-flopped? We can only guess. but I think it's because they're lazy and uninformed. List this one under another foreign policy failure.