A UN special envoy said today impoverished North Korea was on the verge of a humanitarian crisis with severe food shortages threatening six to eight million people.
Mr Maurice Strong, returning to Beijing after three days in Pyongyang, told reporters the risk was "serious and ominous" with donors not supplying enough food for the United Nations to feed the hungry during a nuclear stand-off with the United States.
"Humanitarian aid, as President Bush himself has confirmed, is tied to the politics of this crisis," he said of the US decision to halt food aid at the end of last year until monitoring standards rose to an acceptable level.
"You cannot make the children, the ill people, the old people victims of a political crisis which they have nothing to do with," Mr Strong said. "There's no question that this assistance is a life or death matter for many people," he said.
Washington suspended food shipments to North Korea, saying aid would resume if the country agreed to US conditions for monitoring distribution and that decision was not connected to the crisis over their nuclear stand-off.
Mr Strong, involved in previous attempts to resolve chronic hunger as North Korea suffered from natural calamities and mismanagement in the 1990s and an estimated two million people died, said food shipments should be separated from politics.
"The humanitarian crisis is a real crisis," he said. "It is a crisis affecting the lives and prospects of some six to eight million people."
US President George W. Bush, who labelled North Korea a member of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq, appeared to change tack this week, offering to restart food and energy shipments if Pyongyang agreed to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
Mr Strong said he had extensive meetings with senior North Korean officials and even visited areas receiving food from the United Nations and the World Food Programme. "They are quite prepared as part of a settlement to renounce any desire or intention to acquire nuclear weapons and to subject themselves to inspection," he said.
Mr Strong did not specify what Pyongyang wanted in exchange, but North Korea has demanded the United States guarantee its security.