Food aid to North Korea must continue-rights group

BEIJING, Oct 11 (Reuters) Emergency food aid to North Korea must continue despite the country's claim to have conducted a nuclear test, or millions of ordinary citizens could be at risk of hunger and starvation, Human Rights Watch said tday.

North Korea said on Monday it had tested a nuclear device, compounding diplomatic isolation for the impoverished country, which was devastated by famine in the 1990s and which suffers from chronic grain shortages.

''North Korea's nuclear weapons programme can have devastating security implications in the region, but suspending food aid could be lethal for ordinary North Koreans,'' Sophie Richardson, the deputy Asia director for the New York-based group, said in a statement.

The statement echoed calls from the Red Cross and World Food Programme for aid to continue as the winter approaches and the country faces a harvest weaker than last year's because of severe flooding.

Some 100,000 tonnes of crops were destroyed by the floods, China's Xinhua news agency reported.

At a North Korean cabinet meeting, the government of the energy-starved country stressed the need for electricity and fuel to aid the autumn harvest.

''The government should have enough funds to purchase more grain from farmers for assuring more foodstuff reserves,'' Xinhua cited a report in the North's state-run Minju Joson newspaper as saying.

But South Korea suspended its food aid to the North after Pyongyang test-fired several missiles in July, and has since declined to provide the balance of an emergency flood relief package.

The World Food Programme has also said that donations from China were down by about 60 per cent this year and that its own operation had received only 10 per cent of its funding goal.

Last year, North Korea received about 1 millions tonnes of food aid -- nearly 20 per cent of its entire food requirement --about half of which came from China and South Korea, Human Rights Watch said.

In poorer parts of the country, aid workers say people subsist on coarse grains like millet and sorghum, with little meat or eggs.

North Korea has been suspected of diverting food aid to the military, but Human Rights Watch said its research showed that both army members and ordinary civilians suffered from hunger and food shortages.

REUTERS SAM BST1101