WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States said Friday it will send 500,000 metric tonnes of emergency food aid to North Korea over the next year under a deal with Pyongyang permitting better monitoring of deliveries.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) said it hoped shipments, which were suspended in January 2006 when the Stalinist state "severely limited humanitarian monitoring and access," would resume in June under the deal.

Operational details remain to be worked out, however.

"We're responding to a situation in dire need," USAID spokesman David Snider told AFP as US experts warned that North Korea faced the risk of a new famine, a decade after up to one million people died of starvation.

Snider said North Korea itself estimates it is 1.5 million tonnes short of its minimum requirements to prevent a critical food shortage, but he added that outside experts fear the gap could be even greater.

The United States hopes to make up for a third of the shortfall with North Korea receiving 400,000 tonnes through the World Food Program (WFP) and about 100,000 tonnes via US non-government organizations (NGOs).

Chronic food shortages worsened this year due to soaring grain prices, crop damage following floods last summer and dwindling foreign donations.

"It's a hugely significant contribution," WFP spokeswoman Jennifer Parmelee told AFP. "It's very timely."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said meanwhile that "there is no connection" between the food aid and dragged-out negotiations aimed at scrapping North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.

The "understanding" to resume food aid comes after a team of US government experts returned to Washington from talks last week in North Korea and discussions here centered on finding better ways to monitor deliveries.

"The two sides have agreed on terms for a substantial improvement in monitoring and access in order to allow for confirmation of receipt by the intended recipients," a USAID statement said.

It said Washington and Pyongyang agreed on a "framework to allow WFP and NGO staff broad geographic access to populations in need and the ability to effectively monitor the distribution of US commodities."

Snider said the deal, for example, allows for monitors with Korean language skills.

The kinds of food to be distributed will be determined by a joint assessment conducted over the next few weeks, the USAID statement said.

Experts will meet in the North Korean capital Pyongyang "in the near future" to work out operational matters and the launch of the aid.

"Premised on a successful outcome of those discussions, the United States will deliver a first shipment in June in light of the urgency of North Korea's food shortfall," it said.

Until it had suspended deliveries, the United States had provided about two million tonnes of wheat and other food aid to North Korea through the WFP since 1995, according to USAID.

The WFP said the United States is the "biggest historical donor" to its program for North Korea, having provided a total of 665 million dollars worth of food since WFP launched operations there in 1995.

Other important donors have included South Korea, Australia, Switzerland, Canada, Germany, Russia and Italy, according to Parmelee.

USAID said the emergency aid program was developed through close coordination and extensive consultation with experts in the South Korean government.

South Korea said Thursday it wanted direct talks with North Korea to discuss providing badly needed food aid, apparently softening its position that the communist state must first ask for help.

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