International community pounds on Myanmar's doors

The United Nations said Myanmar’s isolationist ruling generals were even forbidding the import of communications equipment, hampering already difficult contact among relief agencies.

A U.N. report said Saturday that emergency relief from the international community had reached an estimated 500,000 people. But the junta insists it will handle distribution to victims of Cyclone Nargis.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was sending U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes to Myanmar this weekend. Myanmar’s leader, Senior Gen.Than Shwe, has refused to take Bans telephone calls and has not answered two letters. Holmes will be carrying a third, U.N. spokesman Michele Montas said in New York.

Holmes was expected to arrive Sunday evening in Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, said Amanda Pitt, a U.N. spokeswoman in Bangkok, the capital of neighboring Thailand.

"He’s going at the request of the secretary-general to find out what’s really going on the ground, to get a much better picture of how the response is going and ... to see how much we can help them scale up this response," Pitt said. Details of the visit, she said, were still being worked out.

The U.N. report said all communications equipment used by foreign agencies must be purchased through Myanmar’s Ministry of Posts and Communications - with a maximum of 10 telephones per agency - for $1,500 each. Importing equipment is not allowed.

State-run radio said the government has so far spent 20 billion kyat (about $2 million) for relief work and has received millions of dollars worth of relief supplies from local and international donors. It said the government was distributing assistance promptly and efficiently to the affected areas.

State radio on Sunday also said the government was providing "full health services" to the victims, saying that except for the "usual diseases" there were no epidemic outbreaks.

Aid agencies were not convinced and international outrage mounted over Myanmar’s handling of the crisis.

Save the Children, a global aid agency, said Sunday 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."

Britain’s prime minister accused authorities in the country, also known as Burma, of preventing foreign aid from reaching victims and said the military regime cares more about its own survival than its people’s welfare. "This is inhuman," Gordon Brown told the British Broadcasting Corp.

In one town near Yangon, tired and hungry refugees stood in the baking sun beside flooded rice paddies, demolished monasteries and thatched huts. With the arrival of each vehicle carrying precious food and water, they jumped with excitement and surged ahead to get a share. At least they were getting something.

"The farther you go, the worse the situation," said an overwhelmed doctor in the town of Twante, just southwest of Yangon, Myanmar’s main city. "Near Yangon, people are getting a lot of help and it’s still bad. In the remote delta villages, we don’t even want to imagine." The doctor declined to give her name, fearing government reprisal.

The government flew 60 diplomats and U.S. officials in helicopters to three places in the Irrawaddy delta, the hardest-hit area, on Saturday to show them progress in the relief effort.

"It was a show," Shari Villarosa, the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar, told The Associated Press by telephone after returning to Yangon. "That’s what they wanted us to see."

A French navy ship that arrived Saturday off Myanmar’s shores loaded with food, medicines and fresh water - a potentially lifesaving cargo - was given the now-familiar red light. France’s U.N. ambassador, Jean-Maurice Ripert, called it "nonsense."

"We have small boats, which could allow us to go through the delta to most of the regions where no one has accessed yet," he said. "We have small helicopters to drop food, and we have doctors."

The USS Essex, an amphibious assault ship, and its battle group also have been waiting to join the relief effort. U.S. Marine flights to Yangon from their makeshift headquarters in Utapao, Thailand, continued Saturday - bringing the total to 500,000 pounds (227,000 kilograms) of aid delivered - but negotiations to allow helicopters to fly directly to the disaster zone were stalled.

Myanmar’s state-run television, which has repeatedly broadcast footage of generals reassuring refugees calmly sitting in clean tents, announced Friday that the cyclone death toll had nearly doubled to 78,000 with about 56,000 still missing. Aid groups say even those estimates are low.

The International Red Cross says the death toll alone is probably about 128,000, with many more deaths possible from disease and starvation unless help gets quickly to some 2.5 million survivors.

But seeing that the help gets to the victims does not appear to be a top priority for Myanmar’s rulers. The military, which took power in a 1962 coup, has even barred foreigners from traveling outside of Yangon, putting up a security cordon around the city.

Myanmar has been slightly more open to aid from its neighbors, accepting Thai and Indian medical teams, which arrived Saturday. The 32-member Thai team was expected to travel to the delta in the coming days, said Dr. Surachet Satitniramai, director of Thailand’s National Medical Emergency Services Institute.

The Indian team consists of 50 doctors and paramedics from the Army Medical Corp., said Indian Air Force spokesman Wing Cmdr. Manish Gandhi. He could not immediately say if they would be allowed to go to the delta.

Photo: AP