N Korea food aid could stop in January says WFP

GENEVA, Oct 10 (Reuters) The World Food Programme (WFP) said today it would have to halt distribution of rations in North Korea by January unless more funds were received.

The spokeswoman said it was too soon to know whether donations for North Korea would be frozen or fall as a result of any international sanctions imposed on the isolated country in retaliation for it carrying out a nuclear test yesterday.

The United Nations agency aims to feed 1.9 million people in North Korea but is feeding fewer than one million due to ''financial constraints'', WFP spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told a news briefing.

It has received only ten per cent of the 102 million dollars it sought for a two-year programme which began last June.

''If we don't get more contributions, we won't have any more food and food aid in January,'' Berthiaume said.

WFP's North Korea country representative said yesterday the agency's pipeline would run dry ''a few months from now''.

The official, Jean-Pierre de Margerie, said indications were that the country's harvest would not be as good as last year's.

Even in a good year, North Korea falls about 1 million tonnes short of the food it needs to feed its people.

The WFP drastically scaled back its programme earlier this year to a target of 75,000 tonnes of food aid annually, from 500,000 tonnes.

That came after a compromise with North Korea after the government said it no longer wanted handouts, and disagreements over the conditions for supplying aid.

Up to 2.5 million North Koreans, or about ten per cent of the population, died in the 1990s due to famines caused by drought, flooding and economic mismanagement.

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