SEOUL, March 22 (Reuters) - South Korea will send cement, rice and construction equipment to North Korea, citing progress in disarmament talks for resuming aid it had suspended due to Pyongyang's nuclear test last year, an official said in Thursday. South Korea's decision to send aid to the impoverished North comes as six-way talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's pursuit of atomic weapons stall in Beijing due to a deadlock over frozen North Korean funds at a Macau bank. "The aid is something that we had already agreed upon," Vice Unification Minister Shin Eon-sang said at a news briefing, adding the overall tenor of the talks has been positive. Last August, South Korea put together a one-time aid package for North Korea to help it with flooding that a pro-Pyongyang newspaper said killed hundreds. Shin said the aid that will be sent was the remainder of that flood-relief package. It was not delivered due to North Korea defying international warnings and conducting its first nuclear test in October. The shipments will head to North Korea at the end of this month and include 10,500 tonnes of rice, 70,000 tonnes of cement, 50 trucks and 1,800 tonnes of reinforcement rods for construction, Shin said. South Korea, one of the North's key benefactors, had suspended its regular food and fertiliser handouts after the North test-fired missiles in July 2006. After North Korea agreed at six-country talks in February to begin shutting down its main reactor and source of its weapons-grade plutonium, Seoul said it would resume regular fertiliser aid to the North and could soon resume its massive rice handouts.
