The new donation came in response to a World Food Program (WFP) warning that a new crisis could be looming similar to the famine which devastated North Korea in the 1990s.

"The United States will be donating, in response to the WFP appeal, 50,000 metric tonnes of agricultural commodities for North Korea," said State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli.

The United Sates supplied 50,000 tonnes of food aid to North Korea in 2004 and 100,000 tonnes the year before - shipments which made the United States one of the largest single providers of aid to the Stalinist state.

Top US officials have always denied that aid is linked to the crisis over North Korea's nuclear program, insisting it is never used to entice the hermetic state back to the negotiating table.

"It is not related to the six-party talks; our decisions are made on humanitarian considerations," Ereli said. "It is a humanitarian act based on need."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan added: "The president has said, he does not believe food should be used as a diplomatic weapon."

The WFP had recently unveiled new procedures to ensure that food aid reaches those in most need, which if fully implemented could reduce the possibility of unauthorized diversion, a factor that contributed to the US offer, Ereli said.

The United States has never had diplomatic relations with North Korea and has been locked in a prolonged standoff with Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons programs.

The exact make-up of the aid shipment was being discussed with the WFP but in addition to food, could include tools and seeds, Ereli said.

North Korea has boycotted the six-party talks with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, aimed at ending its nuclear weapons program, for more than a year, after three inconclusive rounds.

Kim Jong-Il last week told a South Korean minister that his country would show up at disarmament talks in July if the United States would "acknowledge and respect" Pyongyang as a dialogue partner.

But a senior State Department official said on Wednesday that "the issue is not how America treats North Korea."

The food aid offer meanwhile came on the same day as two North Korean scholars revealed they had delivered a written personal message from Kim to President George W. Bush offering to end the crisis in return for sovereignty and non-aggression guarantees.

"If the United States makes a bold decision, we will respond accordingly," the message read, according to scholars Donald Gregg, a former US ambassador to Seoul, and Don Oberdorfer who revealed the offer in a Washington Post op-ed article on Wednesday.

But the report was shrugged off by White House.

"I didn't consider there anything new to be in that report. I mean, I'm not interested in going back and plowing old ground," McClellan said.

North Korea in February declared itself a nuclear power and said it would never negotiate away its atomic weapons.

The other principal food aid providers to North Korea are the European Union and South Korea.

A top WFP official warned last month that a food crisis on the scale of the famine from 1994 to the end of the decade - that some experts say left two million dead from malnutrition and related disease - could occur again unless urgent action is taken.

The WFP had almost exhausted its entire stock of food destined to keep 6.5 million North Koreans - nearly a third of the population - from starvation.

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