Korean Red Cross negotiations fail to secure accord

Korean Red Cross negotiations fail to secure accord

BEIJING (Reuter): Negotiators from the Red Cross organizations of rival North and South Korea failed yesterday to reach agreement on shipments of grain aid to the hungry and isolated North, officials said.

"In today's meetings we did not get a final agreement between the two sides," Lee Byung-woong, secretary-general of the South Korean Red Cross, told reporters.

However, Lee said the talks would resume in the near future through a direct telephone line in the town of Panmunjom that straddles the border between the two Koreas, technically still at war since their 1950-1953 conflict ended in only a truce.

The talks had stalled over the exact amount and method of delivery for South Korea grain to the North, Lee said.

The South Korean Red Cross had insisted on opening more channels for direct shipments of grain while the North wanted a pledge of an exact aid amount before it could agree to anything, he said.

The South also wanted the grain to be moved directly between the two Korean organizations rather than using the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies as a go- between as in past shipments of aid, he said.

"We suggested a meeting to discuss the method of delivery," Lee said. "The North Korean Red Cross side insisted if we show an exact amount of an assistance, then they can discuss other issues."

Northern negotiators said the talks would resume after the South decided on the amount of food aid it would give.

"We have not yet entered the substantial discussion. We just opened the lid of the bowl," Paek Yong-ho, secretary-general of North Korea's Red Cross, told reporters.

"I cannot say we are disappointed or we are satisfied because we're in the middle," Paek said.

Lee said his delegation had told their Northern counterparts that the amount of assistance would depend on how much Southern citizens were willing to donate.

"At this stage we cannot promise an exact amount of grain," he said.

The negotiations on speeding up food aid to the flood-hit and hungry North began last Friday, the first such inter-Korean Red Cross talks in almost five years.

North Korea is sliding into famine after the Stalinist hermit nation was hit by devastating floods in 1995 and 1996, with officials reporting deaths of children from malnutrition and farmers eating sawdust to fill out their diet.

"Basically, food stocks are now running out in North Korea," said Johan Schaar, head of the regional delegation of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

The UN World Food Program has estimated North Korea only has enough food to last it until June and then its 24 million people will have to wait for the next harvest in October and November.

South Korea, the United States and Japan are scheduled to hold talks in Tokyo on May 7 to discuss food shortages in the North and ways to encourage Pyongyang to join peace talks aimed at hammering out a permanent treaty to end the Korean War.

Seoul, Washington and Tokyo are worried that a desperate North Korean leadership might strike the South if an economic crisis threatened its survival.

Pyongyang agreed last month to join the four-way peace talks if it was first guaranteed large-scale food aid, U.S. diplomatic recognition and an easing of trade sanctions.