NKoreans' quiet food aid trip to US

North Korean officials quietly visited Los Angeles last week to talk about resuming food aid, which the impoverished state cut off five months ago during a standoff, participants have said.

The move comes as tensions gradually ease with North Korea, which stunned the world by conducting a nuclear test earlier this year but in recent weeks has made overtures for dialogue.

Five North Korean officials received special US permission to visit Los Angeles where they met representatives of non-governmental organizations that provide relief worldwide, according to the groups.

Richard Walden, president of Operation USA, said the charity picked up the North Koreans at the airport as a goodwill gesture and took them on a tour of its warehouse stocked with medicine and medical equipment to be sent overseas.

"They were very open, very nice and very cordial," Walden told AFP. "They looked like they were from any other aid ministry in any country."

Walden said the North Koreans' three-day trip came about after former president Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang on August 4 to free two US journalists.

"This was something useful made possible by Clinton's visit," Walden said, while declining details on how the trip came about. "I was delighted that the State Department gave visas almost immediately."

The delegation, which also met with other relief groups, included four members of the Korea-US Private Exchange Society, the North Korean body charged with handling relief goods from US non-governmental organizations.

A fifth delegation member came from North Korea's mission at the United Nations and received special permission to travel beyond the New York area, Walden said.

The group was not linked to a separate delegation of two New York-based North Korean diplomats who were at the same time in New Mexico to speak with Governor Bill Richardson, a frequent US interlocutor with Pyongyang.

North Korea suffers chronic hunger problems, with hundreds of thousands dying in famine in the 1990s.

But the communist regime -- which prides itself on the philosophy of "juche," or self-reliance -- in March booted out five US non-governmental organizations.

The United States in June last year reached a deal to provide 500,000 metric tons of food aid to North Korea but was only able to deliver a fraction of it. Washington insisted on strict monitoring of the aid, fearing it will go to the elite rather than the neediest.

The World Food Program, through which most US aid was to be channeled, has said that North Korea will need more than 800,000 tons of food aid from abroad to feed its 24 million people this year.

But with tensions soaring, the UN agency last month pared back its goal of feeding 6.2 million hungry in North Korea and instead set a target of just 2.27 million.

North Korea watchers have been divided on what has led to the new tone out of Pyongyang. Some believe the North is reaching out for talks, while others argue that its shift shows that UN-backed sanctions are working.

President Barack Obama's administration has indicated it is not convinced that North Korea is ready for meaningful negotiations.

While holding out the door for dialogue, it repeated Thursday that it did not believe conditions were right for Stephen Bosworth, the top US official on North Korea, to accept an invitation to Pyongyang.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Bosworth will head to East Asia "sometime soon" to consult with countries in the region but said he "will not talk to North Korea."