Food not linked to nuclear deal

North Korea prepared Monday to unload 37,000 tons of wheat from a U.S.-chartered ship, which the State Department called a humanitarian act with “zero linkage” to nuclear talks with the communist state.

The food arrived Sunday in response to an urgent call by the U.N. World Food Program (WFP), worried about shortages not seen in seven years. It is the first installment of 500,000 tons in assistance promised by the United States.

Pyongyang submitted an overdue declaration of its nuclear activities and blew up the cooling tower of its main reactor last week.

In return, the Bush administration lifted some trade sanctions against the North and prepared to remove it from the U.S. blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism.

“There is zero linkage here,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters. “Anyone asserting that there is a linkage either is extremely misinformed or malicious in intent.”

Washington has been sending food aid to the North through WFP for years, but it suspended shipments in 2006 because of concerns about improper distribution. It announced resumption of assistance in May, saying that aid officials are now better able to monitor distribution.

“We do not link food assistance, whether it is to North Korea or to Zimbabwe or any other country, to political considerations,” Mr. Casey said. “As far as I know, there is no one associated with the six-party talks who had any say in this decision, any involvement in it, any participation in it.”

The six-nation nuclear negotiations, which include the United States, North Korea, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, are expected to resume in Beijing next week.

The WFP said that the new U.S. food shipment would help it to expand its operations to feed more than 5 million people, up from 1.2 million now receiving aid. It also said it hopes to start distributing the wheat within two weeks.

“The challenge will now be to put words into action and quickly expand distributions of badly needed food aid to the hungriest people of [North Korea],” said Jean-Pierre de Margerie, the WFP’s North Korea country director.

Food shortages in the 1990s caused by a combination of lost Soviet aid, natural disasters and mismanagement are estimated to have killed as many as 2 million North Koreans.

Last week’s U.S. and North Korean actions on the nuclear issue marked the completion of the second phase of a landmark deal reached last year that would dismantle Pyongyang’s programs.

So far, the North has almost disabled its main nuclear complex at Yongbyon and accounted for its plutonium program by giving the United States 19,000 pages of records dating from the 1980s. Washington has begun delivery of heavy fuel oil, which is linked to the nuclear talks.

In the third and final phase of the deal, the North must dismantle its program, including its atomic weapons, and give up the plutonium it has produced. Washington also wants an explanation of North Korea’s proliferation activities and a uranium-enrichment program it says the North tried to develop.

The United States has promised to establish diplomatic relations with North Korea for the first time since the division of the Koreas after the 1950-53 war.