U.S. has no plan to provide food aid to DPRK: spokesman

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WASHINGTON, July 1 (Xinhua) -- The United States will not provide the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) with food assistance before Pyongyang assures proper distribution of American aid, the State Department said Wednesday.

"We currently have no plans to provide additional food aid to North Korea and any additional food would have to have assurances that it would be appropriately used," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.

However, Kelly noted that "we remain very concerned about the well-being of the North Korean people. ... we are very concerned because we need to have an adequate program management in place, monitoring and access provisions and we don't have that right now."

About two months ago, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the United States has no interest to offer economic aid to the DPRK.

"We have absolutely no interest and no willingness on the part of this administration to give them any economic aid at all," Clinton told a hearing on the fiscal year 2009 war supplement held by the Senate Appropriations Committee on April 30.

Before Clinton made the remarks, the DPRK reportedly informed Washington that it no longer wished to receive American food assistance, and asked U.S. non-governmental organizations working in the DPRK to distribute food assistance to leave the country.