WASHINGTON (Yonhap) -- The U.S. Senate's move to ban food assistance for North Korea without a presidential waiver overlooks a more important issue -- securing measures for fair and transparent distributions of food donations in the communist nation, a U.S. congressman said Monday.
"My concern is that the compromise reached in the Senate would not lead to effective monitoring of food aid, should U.S. food aid ever be resumed," Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) told Yonhap News Agency.
The Senate passed a farm bill last week that includes strict restrictions on giving North Korea food aid.
The five-year farm bill cuts agriculture subsidies and includes an amendment that the U.S. will provide Pyongyang with food aid under the Food for Peace Act only when the president issues a waiver in consideration of national interest.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) initially proposed an amendment to cut off U.S. food aid to North Korea, but Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-Mass) and ranking Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana countered it with their own amendment to leave the door open for the shipment of food to the North.