Pyongyang (AsiaNews/Agencies) – The World Food Programme (WFP) has reached agreement with North Korea to resume food aid to the Asian country, said Tony Banbury, WFP director for Asia. The programme will be smaller than it was before its suspension in December.

The agreement, according to Banbury's statement in Beijing yesterday, was signed on Friday 5 May in Pyongyang. It will supply food aid to 1.9 million of the "most needy" people in the country, down from the 6.5 million people catered for under the old programme. The official said: "We would have liked to see a bigger operation, but that was not possible at this time."

Banbury said the WFP will have10 international staff members in North Korea and an office in Pyongyang. In the past, the agency had 32 foreigners in the country and five regional offices in addition to the capital. Food aid will be supplied only in areas where it can monitor distribution in order to assure foreign donors that the aid was reaching those in need.

For more than a decade, North Korea has depended on foreign donations to supply food to the population. The Stalinist regime of the leader Kim Jong-Il however restricted the activities of foreign organizations and exerted pressure so that aid distribution would be cut back. The WFP suspended aid in December after Pyongyang asked the agency not to give food but to focus on economic development aid. The two sides have been negotiating since then.

Late last year, North Korea expelled all private aid groups. The move came soon after the European Union's decision to sponsor a United Nations resolution criticizing its human rights record.