SEOUL, June 5 : Though widespread famine is reported on its doorstep. North Korea has backed out of a rare deal to buy wheat from the United States, a contract that had been months in the making, reports AP.

As the grain was about to be delivered by freighter last week, the unpredictable communist government told commodity trading firm Cargill. Inc. that it wouldn’t follow through with a contract to trade about 4,000 metric tons of zinc for 20,000 tons of wheat, a Cargill spokeswoman said Thursday.

"Regretfully, we will not deliver the wheat under these circumstances.” Cargill s Lori Johnson said.

She declined comment on a South Korean report that the North had asked to delayJJs de-five^ of the zin*. ' * ** \

”We don't know why they chose not to proceed and won't speculate about their reasons," Ms Johnson said.

A collapsing post-Cold War economy and two consecutive years of flooding have aggravated chronic food shortages In North Korea. Relief officials have been warning of an oncoming famine for more than a

The UN World Food Programme said Wednesday in Rome that the system for rationing food from North Korea's specialist farms has now stopped working at half of the country's 10 distribution centres because they're out of food.