South Korean Red Cross offers DPRK humanitarian aid

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26/10 Tass 63

SEOUL, October 26 (Itar-Tass) -- South Korea has offered the DPRK
humanitarian aid in the forum of a limited amount of maize and other
goods, the South Korean Red Cross Society reported on Monday.
This is the first proposal of the kind on the part of official Seoul
over the last almost two years. During the latest talks of the Red Cross
Societies of two Koreas on October 16, the North Korean delegation asked
for providing batches of food and fertilizers.
The South Korean Red Cross Society offered its North Korean partners
to supply compatriots for humanitarian reasons with 10,000 tonnes of
maize, 20 tonnes of powder milk and a batch of medicines. It will be the
first supplies to the North since the moment of President Lee Myung-bak
caming into power in February 2008. Then Lee Myung-bak conditioned
supplies of state aid to Pyongyang by its real progress in the cause of
nuclear disarmament.
It will take at least 30 days to purchase maize worth 33.38 million
dollars and milk worth 127,000 dollars, pack and ship them. Ten thousand
tonnes of food can hardly solve the problem of a chronic lack of
foodstuffs in North Korea where the harvest of this year turned out to be
one million tonnes of grain less than the level which the North Korean
24-million-strong population needs.
-0-ast