Broken Promise to Mean Less Food Aid

A U.N. agency will cut back aid to hundreds of thousands of hungry people after Pyongyang reneged on its promise to provide access to the entire country, a U.N. official said in Rome. The Communist nation assured U.N. relief officials last month that it would let workers with the Rome-based World Food Program into all 210 counties, including areas off limits for security reasons, said Catherine Bertini, the program’s top official. However, the agency has been refused entry to 39 counties it sought to enter, Bertini said. For now, the program will scale back its operations by about 61,000 tons of food, valued at $33 million, and will not be providing aid to about 765,000 people, mostly women and children, Bertini said.