By Stephen Kaufman
Staff Writer
Washington — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States will base its decision on whether to provide North Korea with food assistance on the country’s relative needs and the ability to ensure that any assistance would reach the North Koreans who need it.
Speaking with South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan in Washington June 24, Clinton said the Obama administration is “deeply concerned about the well-being of the North Korean people,” of which 25 percent reportedly are in need of food aid.
The United States has had a long-standing position that its humanitarian assistance is “separated from political and security concerns,” Clinton said. “They are not considered in the same category at all.”
U.S. administrations have provided food aid to North Korea in the past, but the Obama administration has not yet come to a decision on whether to provide new assistance, the secretary said.
“North Korea must address our serious concerns about monitoring and outstanding issues related to North Korea’s suspension of previous food aid programs before we can consider any decision,” she said, and the decision “must be based on legitimate humanitarian needs, competing needs elsewhere around the world, and our ability to ensure and monitor that whatever food aid is provided actually reaches the people who are in need.”
She said the United States also remains “firmly committed” to the peaceful elimination of nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula and is open to direct engagement with North Korea over the issue. But, Clinton added, “Pyongyang must improve its relations with the Republic of Korea.”
Both the United States and South Korea are committed to “work side by side to achieve lasting peace,” while enforcing sanctions that prevent the further development of North Korea’s nuclear program and its proliferation of nuclear materials, she said.
Prior to their remarks, Clinton and Kim signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the United States and the Republic of Korea on development cooperation. According to a June 23 State Department notice, South Korea is the newest member of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and has made “impressive strides” to expand its overseas development assistance programs, as well as pledging to triple its budget to fund those programs by 2015.
“The MOU will enhance policy coordination between both sides to promote the impact and efficiency in aid delivery within mutually agreed priority areas such as global hunger and food security, maternal and children’s health, and climate change” and “puts into place a meaningful partnership to expand the reach of development assistance and help encourage the shift from aid to sustained economic growth and prosperity,” the State Department notice said.
In her remarks, Clinton said South Korea “approaches development with a unique credibility as one of the great success stories of the 20th century,” noting that the country has “moved from being an aid recipient to an important donor nation.”
She also praised South Korea’s pledge to triple its development budget and its plans to host the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan in November 2011.
“This was a poor, war-torn country that has risen to become the world’s 12th-largest economy, and a very vibrant, effective democracy,” Clinton said, describing its rapid economic rise as “inspiring.”
