Pressure on Burma to open up to aid

18 May 2008, 3:40 pm   -   Source: AAP
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Aid was trickling in to an estimated 2.5 million people left destitute by Cyclone Nargis in Burma's Irrawaddy Delta.

Aid was trickling in to an estimated 2.5 million people left destitute by Cyclone Nargis in Burma's Irrawaddy Delta as foreign envoys tried to get the junta to open up to more international relief.

The World Food Program (WFP), which is leading the outside emergency food effort, said it had managed to get rice and beans to 212,000 of the 750,000 people it thinks are most in need after the May 2 storm, which has left at least 134,00 dead or missing.

"It's not enough. There are a very large number of people who are yet to receive any kind of assistance and that's what's keeping out teams working round the clock," WFP spokesman Marcus Prior said in Bangkok.

Save the Children, a global aid agency, said that thousands of young children face starvation without quick food aid.

"We are extremely worried that many children in the affected areas are now suffering from severe acute malnourishment, the most serious level of hunger," said Jasmine Whitbread, who heads the agency's operation in Britain.

"When people reach this stage, they can die in a matter of days."

International outrage is mounting over Burma's handling of the disaster.

Britain's prime minister accused authorities in the country of preventing foreign aid from reaching victims and said the military regime cared more about its own survival than it's people's welfare.

"This is inhuman," Gordon Brown told the BBC.

In the past 50 years, only two Asian cyclones have exceeded Nargis in terms of human cost - a 1970 storm that killed 500,000 people in neighbouring Bangladesh, and another that killed 143,000 in 1991, also in Bangladesh.

With the reclusive military government still refusing to open its doors to a large-scale tsunami-style aid operation, disaster experts say Nargis' body count could still climb dramatically.

To try to offset such a prospect, a steady stream of diplomats have been flying in to Burma to plead for more access for aid workers and flights.

Pressure is also mounting at the United Nations, where France has accused the junta of being on the verge of a crime against humanity.

The United Nations' chief humanitarian officer, John Holmes, is expected to fly in the evening and meet junta number four Thein Sein, the Prime Minister and leader of the Burma military's own aid operations.

Holmes is also expected to hand over a third letter from his boss, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, to junta supremo Than Shwe, who has refused to talk to Ban on the phone since the cyclone and its massive sea-surge slammed into the delta.

Confident they are handling the crisis properly, the generals took diplomats on a tour Saturday of the delta, where 2.5 million people are now clinging to survival in an area of inundated swamp the size of Austria

They appeared to have worked hard to keep the diplomats away from the destitute.

"The purpose was to show the situation was under control. Where we were they didn't hide anything, but of course they selected the places we visited," Bernard Delpuech, head of the European Commission Humanitarian Office in Rangoon, said.

Three days ago, columns of men, women and children stretched for miles alongside the road near the delta town of Kunyangon, begging in the mud and rain for scraps of food or clothing from the occasional passing aid vehicle.

Thousands of other refugees are crammed into monasteries and schools, fed and watered by local volunteers and private donors who have sent in clothes, biscuits, dried noodles and rice.

Buddhist monks play a major role.

"We have distributed over 100 tonnes of rice and more than 3,000 tin roofing sheets so far. We are trying to distribute more," said the Venerable Nyanissara, a 73-year-old patriarch running a makeshift relief centre south of Rangoon.

The reluctance of the military, which has ruled unchecked for the past 46 years, to allow an influx of foreign aid workers appears to stem from fear that it might loosen its vice-like grip on power.

In a rare acknowledgment of criticism, state television said on Saturday outside media reports suggesting the government was not doing enough were inaccurate.

The army, navy and air force had already delivered extensive aid, and tens of millions of dollars had been spent, state television said.

In a rare sign of agreement with international aid agencies, the junta on Friday night sharply raised its official toll from the disaster to 77,738 dead and 55,917 missing.

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