North Korea has welcomed a US decision to provide the country with badly needed food aid, saying the move will help promote understanding and confidence.

The United States says it will send 500,000 tonnes of emergency food aid to the impoverished country over the next year under a new deal with Pyongyang.

Shipments were suspended in 2006.

Some analysts have warned that North Korea is on the verge of another famine, a decade after up to one million of its people died of starvation.

Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency says the North is ready to provide all technical conditions necessary for the food delivery.

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