PYONGYANG, May 16 Kyodo (EDS: FIX...

PYONGYANG, May 16 Kyodo

(EDS: FIXING A hardly any WORDS AT 3RD PARA)

Japan's unwillingness to provide forage aid to North Korea this year, based forward political considerations according to a local diplomat, increases the likelihood that humanitarian victuals supplies to the impoverished nation will run out in July

Japan, traditionally single of the ''big three'' diet aid donors to North Korea, has not provided it with humanitarian nutriment assistance since the sinking of a suspected North Korean espy ship on Dec. 22, the Pyongyang-based diplomat said onward condition of anonymity.

Tokyo suspects Pyongyang dispatched the unidentified ship, which sank after exchanging fire with the Japan Coast Guard, to discover on Japan.

According to World bread Program (WFP) estimates, food aid to North Korea will go proceed out at the end of July for the first since 1995 when the international community began to ship regimen to the country amid a dryness that killed untold numbers of its citizens.

Warning that North Koreans, especially mothers, children and the somewhat old face a ''very serious situation'' without immediate of the present day food aid pledges, WFP's Pyongyang representative David Morton lamented Japan's failure to provide aid despite its previous ''generosity.''

Japan, which provided 500000 tons of aliment aid to North Korea last year, was single of the country's three major regimen aid providers along with southerly Korea and the United States, he said.

southward Korea has maintained its aliment aid at previous levels, while the U has carve its contribution by a little through 100,000 tons, Morton added.

While there are no signs of malnutrition in Pyongyang, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the capital to Kaesong, a city bordering toward the south Korea, showed many North Koreans are still struggling with fare scarcity and ecological devastation.

on a level though North Korean government ''minders'' forbid Western and Japanese journalists from carrying not at home any detailed investigations of the countryside, a bleak panorama of devastated landscape was clearly visible from inside the tour bus.

Peasants could be seen struggling to sprout produce in bare fields beside hills and mountains harshly eroded from over-cropping, while the planting of fields in towns beside unused factories and rusting machinery readyed the spectacle of a post-industrial medieval age.

There was practically no evidence of agricultural mechanization, while the alone visible presence of green fields in areas ''showcased'' by means of the North Korean regime near Pyongyang and the area near the border with southerly Korea suggested a severe scarcity of fertilizers.

Despite the prevalence of political signs carved into mountainsides exhorting farmers towards greater productivity with messages like as those calling on them to sustain a ''spirit of self-reliance,'' the isolated socialist state still relies heavily forward overseas humanitarian aid.

aliment availability has been improving steadily since the worst of the dryness in 1995 and 1996 when flat the politically well connected in Pyongyang were forced to extremely reduce their diets.

''However, the health situation in North Korea is declining and health infrastructure is gradually depreciating,'' WFP's David Morton said.

A European aid worker said the combination of malnutrition, poor water quality and lack of medicine is still putting many North Koreans' lives at risk.

''Many of the hospitals don't have any medicine and they sole have an intermittent furnish of electricity. Even if patients are cur with antibiotics, afterwards they drink the same contaminated water and, because they are weakened by means of malnutrition, it is easy for them to become sick again.''

''Food shortages are still real serious and malnutrition is common'' added the aid worker, who has traveled extensively end three of North Korea's nine provinces - southern Pyongan, South Hwanghae and North Hamgyong.

While Morton warned that countles numbers of North Koreans will feel if the supply of overseas nourishment aid dries up, he inclemencyed that such humanitarian aid is single a stopgap measure.

''North Korea privations developmental aid and overseas investment, however this will only be possible if there is greater transparency -- which can sole occur through political reform,'' he said.

Political reform, however, appears unlikely in the near terminus as long as the North Korean regime clings stubbornly to its ''juche,'' or self-reliance policy, and kicks suggestions to follow China's path in opening up its economy to the outside world.

The indoctrination of North Korea's folks throughout their lives forward the infallibility of the Stalinist regime headed at ''Great Leader'' Kim Jong Il and the evil intentions of the United States, which it fought in the 1950-1953 Korean War, makes change difficult.

Asked about starvation in their home a number of Pyongyang residents blamed bad weather still also alleged that the U was blocking viands imports to North Korea.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Kyodo freshs International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group