Beijing - The United Nations food agency Tuesday made an urgent appeal for 60 million dollars in emergency aid to North Korea, saying the food crisis in some areas of the impoverished nation was the worst in a decade.

The need for donations was "extremely pressing" just to cover the "minimal needs" of the World Food Programme's distribution in North Korea until the end of the year, said Jean-Pierre de Margerie, the director of WFP's operations in North Korea.

"In some cases, probably it's a matter of life and death," de Margerie told reporters in Beijing.

WFP needs the urgent aid to continue a 503-million-dollar programme to help 6.3 million of North Korea's 23 million people over the next 15 months.

The country faces a food gap of 1.6 million tons, or more than 20 per cent of its total supply, this year and in June was forced to reduce government-distributed rations from 
500 grams to 150 grams per person per day, said Tony Banbury, WFP's Asian regional director.

Price rises in staple foods such as corn had prompted "significant reliance" on foraging for wild foods by North Korea's poorest people, said Banbury, who returned to Beijing from a one-week inspection of the country's food situation.

"The food security situation has really, tragically deteriorated in the last two years," he said.

"We don't believe it's a famine," Banbury said. "We are intent on making sure it doesn't turn into one."

Floods last summer, successive poor harvests and soaring global food prices have left North Korea with its biggest food gap since 2001, WFP said in a report in late July.

Beijing's concerns over food security made it harder to get export licences for planned food purchases by the WFP in China, Banbury said.

"China's priority is feeding its own population," said Anthea Webb, WFP's China director.

"We acknowledge that they already send bilateral food aid from China to North Korea, and we appreciate that, but our own operation there has a tremendous need," Webb said.

After talks on the problem, Chinese officials were "considering" WFP's request to grant more export licences for its food aid programmes in North Korea and Myanmar, she said.

But Banbury said continuing wrangles over the implementation of an international agreement to dismantle North Korea's nuclear programme had "no impact" on WFP's operations.

WFP urges donor nations not to consider political issues and to proceed from a "purely humanitarian perspective," he said. (dpa)