DESPITE the prospect of a human disaster in famine stricken North Korea, talks in Beijing between the Red Cross organisations of North and South Korea on how the Seoul government might help stalled yesterday. The talks failed over the exact amount of food aid the South was prepared to provide and the method of its shipment to the affected areas.
North and South Korea are still technically at war since a truce ended the Korean conflict in 1953. The Beijing talks were evidently beset by North Korean concerns that the South would use the crisis to exert leverage over the communist government in Pyongyang.
Anxious that food aid should not go to the military in the North, Southern Red Cross negotiators insisted on shipping grain directly between the two Korean organisations rather than through the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies as in the past.
"We did not yet enter into substantial discussion, we just opened the lid of the bowl," Mr Paek Yong ho, secretary general of North Korea's Red Cross, said. He added that he was neither disappointed nor satisfied "because we're in the middle" and further negotiations would take place by telephone.
His counterpart in the South Korea Red Cross, Mr Lee Byung woong, acknowledged that in the first meeting of the two rival groups in five years, "we did not get a final agreement between the two sides".
Mr Lee said the talks, which began on Saturday, would resume in the near future through a direct telephone line in the town of Panmunjom on the demilitarised zone. He confirmed the South Korean Red Cross wanted to open more channels for direct shipments of grain while the North required a pledge of an exact aid amount before it could agree to anything.
The Seoul delegation told its counterparts that the amount of assistance would depend on how much Southern citizens were willing to donate and "at this stage we cannot promise an exact amount of grain".
International aid agencies say North Korea is facing imminent famine after crops were destroyed by floods in 1995 and 1996. "Food stocks are now running out in North Korea," said Mr Johan Schaar of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Ms Kathi Zellweger, of the Catholic aid organisation, Caritas, who has recently returned from a visit to famine hit areas, said yesterday that North Korea is facing a major disaster if there is no help forthcoming in the next few weeks. She said people were mixing grass, edible herbs and bark into rations of rice and maize.
The United Nations World Food Programme estimates North Korea only has enough food to last it until June.