conditions for assistance

The United Nations is far from setting political conditions for assistance - the right to vote, for example, which is denied to women in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

The decision, which curtails 20 programs with a budget of $4.4 million, was made Friday, a day after Pak Gil-yon, the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations, met with Ad Melkert, the development program's associate director, to say that his country would not agree to new conditions for assistance.

After its last examination on the basis of the conditions set on 9 November 1998, the Council decided that Croatia should continue to be granted autonomous trade preferences but that the conditions for assistance under the PHARE programme had not been met and that it was also too soon to negotiate a trade and cooperation agreement.