Myanmar backtracks on aid flight, U.S. says

By Aung Hla Tun
57 minutes ago
 

YANGON (Reuters) - Desperate survivors cried out for aid on Thursday nearly a week after 100,000 people were feared killed by Cyclone Nargis, as pressure piled up on Myanmar to throw its doors open to an international relief operation.

 
The United States was awaiting approval from the ruling junta to start military aid flights, but the U.N. food agency and Red Cross/Red Crescent said they have finally started flying in emergency relief supplies after foot-dragging by the generals.

U.S. ambassador Eric John told a news conference in Bangkok

the United States and Thailand had thought the Myanmar generals had agreed to let a U.S military cargo plane fly in supplies.

But that turned out to be premature.

"We don't have permission yet for the C-130 to go in, but I emphasize 'yet"' John said.

Approval for such a flight would be significant, given the huge distrust and acrimony between the former Burma's generals and Washington, which has imposed tough sanctions to try to end 46 years of unbroken military rule.

Aid has barely trickled into one of the world's most impoverished countries, although experts feared it would be too little and too late to cope with the aftermath of Nargis, which also left one million homeless.

Witnesses have seen little evidence of a relief effort under way in the hard-hit Irrawaddy delta region.

"We'll starve to death if nothing is sent to us," said Zaw Win, a 32-year-old fisherman who waded through floating corpses to find a boat for the two-hour journey to Bogalay, a town where the government said 10,000 people were killed.

AID PLANES ARRIVE

The storm pulverized the delta on Saturday with 190 km (120 mph) winds followed by a massive 12 ft wave that caused most of the casualties and damage, virtually destroying some villages. It was the worst cyclone in Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people were killed in neighboring Bangladesh.

State television on Thursday night did not give an update of the death toll, which stood at 22,980 with 42,119 missing as of Tuesday. Diplomats and disaster experts said the real figure is likely to be much higher.

"The information that we're receiving indicates that there may well be over 100,000 deaths in the delta area," said Shari Villarosa, charge d'affaires of the U.S. embassy in Myanmar.

U.N. officials who had earlier complained the generals were putting up obstacles to an emergency airlift, said a half-dozen cargo planes had been allowed to land at Yangon airport.

The Red Cross/Red Crescent confirmed its first aid plane took off from Kuala Lumpur, carrying six tonnes of shelter materials.

World Food spokesman Paul Risley said aid agencies normally expect to fly in experts and supplies within 48 hours of a disaster, but nearly a week after this cyclone, few have been able to send reinforcements into Myanmar.

A country that has long been suspicious of the outside world is wrestling with a decision over whether to allow what would be the biggest international presence in the country in decades to help care for a sizeable portion of its population.

Some opponents accuse the junta of stalling because they don't want an influx of foreigners into the countryside during Saturday's referendum on an army-drafted constitution that looks set to cement the military's grip on power.

Medicins sans Frontieres, which has 1,238 people in Myanmar, said it was ferrying aid into the delta via trucks and boats.

"We are focusing on those still alive; 50 percent of them have wounds and they are infected," MSF official Frank Smithius in Myanmar told Australian radio. "Because of the winds and high water, people got smashed around."

Jean-Michel Grand, executive director of Action contra la Faim in London, said the logistical obstacles were formidable.

"The roads are very poor or destroyed, and in many cases there were no roads before. Everybody's looking at boats as an alternative. It's going to be a massive logistics challenge.

British medical aid agency Merlin is converting a luxury cruise ship into a floating hospital to reach survivors.

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej failed to reach Myanmar's generals on Thursday after U.S. President George W. Bush asked him to intervene with them to expedite the international aid effort.

"We couldn't reach them because the communication towers have been damaged," government spokesman Wichianchot Sukchotrat said.

Amidst all the death and destruction, life asserted itself. Than Win, who lost seven of her 10 children to Nargis gave birth on Wednesday to a boy, she named "First Love."

"After what happened, this is a beautiful present," she said, lying on a wooden table in one of the few houses left standing in Bogalay town, where an estimated 10,000 died.

(Additional reporting by Nopporn Wong-Anan, Grant McCool and Darren Schuettler in Bangkok, Jalil Hamid in Kuala Lumpur; Writing by Bill Tarrant; Editing by Darren Schuettler)