SEOUL: US envoy Stephen Bosworth held talks Tuesday in South Korea about North Korea's request for food aid, amid a report that Washington would send a team to Pyongyang next week to assess its needs.
Bosworth, the US special envoy for North Korea, said he and his Seoul hosts have "largely reached a common view" but did not elaborate.
The communist state has asked the United States and a variety of other countries for help to feed its people. Private aid groups and UN organisations say millions face severe shortages.
Some Seoul officials are sceptical about the need, suspecting the regime wants to stockpile supplies before the 100th anniversary next year of the birth of founding leader Kim Il-Sung.
The South's Yonhap news agency said Robert King, the US special envoy on the North's human rights, would lead a delegation to the North next week to assess the extent of food shortages.
"We will be making a decision on that in the next few days and it will be announced from Washington," Bosworth told reporters after talks with the South's chief nuclear envoy Wi Sung-Lac.
The United States in 2008 pledged 500,000 tonnes of rice but shipments stopped the following year amid questions over distribution transparency.
South Korea halted an annual 400,000 tonnes of rice to its neighbour in 2008.
Samaritan's Purse, one of five US groups that visited North Korea in February, said a harsh winter had reduced crop yield by up to half and some people were already eating grass, leaves and tree bark to survive.
UN agencies said six million people -- a quarter of the population -- need urgent aid. A famine in the 1990s killed hundreds of thousands.
Yonhap said King's team could arrive as early as next Monday.
"The purpose of this trip will be confined to discussing the issue of food assistance and it will have no political connotations," it quoted a South Korean government source as saying.
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