U.N. Head To Press Myanmar On Cyclone Aid

Secretary-General Will Meet With Junta's Leaders, As Pressure Builds For Speeding Relief To Victims

(CBS/AP)  U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will travel to Myanmar this week to speak directly with the government about the aid crisis.

"The Secretary General will arrive on Wednesday in Yangon and travel to the Delta, and he hopes to meet with senior government officials to work with Myanmar authorities to dramatically accelerate the flow of disaster relief to victims," UNSG Press Spokesperson Michele Montas confirmed to CBS News.

CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk reports that the trip is aimed at increasing pressure on the junta to allow food and aid workers into the country.

“The U.N. Secretary-General was unusually critical of the military junta in Myanmar for delaying aid deliveries and, last week, scolded the government, which has not returned his calls or letters,” Falk added. “Although some U.S. and U.N. aid shipments have been allowed by Myanmar's government, delays have impeded the relief effort.”

“In order to deflect international criticism, the Myanmar government flew sixty diplomats and U.N. officials in helicopters to three places in the Irrawaddy delta,” Falk said, “but what they saw must have convinced the Secretary General to confront the Myanmar government eye-to-eye.”

On Sunday a senior U.N. envoy went to Myanmar to urge its military junta to accept more international aid for cyclone survivors, while a British minister suggested the isolationist regime may be relenting.

John Holmes, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, was greeted by Deputy Foreign Minister Kyaw Thu at the start of a three-day trip that will include a tour of the Irrawaddy delta, the area most severely hit by Cyclone Nargis on May 2-3.

Holmes also will meet with high government leaders, said Daniel Baker, a senior U.N. official.

He did not elaborate but other officials have said Holmes' mission is to assess the needs of survivors and urge the isolationist junta to open its doors to more international aid before people begin dying from starvation and diseases.

Holmes was dispatched to Myanmar after junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe refused to take telephone calls from United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon or to respond to two letters from him, U.N. spokesman Michele Montas said in New York. Holmes is to deliver a third letter.

State television said Than Shwe visited two relief camps Sunday, the first time he has met with the survivors since the tragedy more than two weeks ago. He visited the camps on the outskirts of Yangon, and it is not known if he intends to go to Irrawaddy.

Holmes' visit comes as world leaders expressed outrage at the handling of the disaster by the military regime, which insists it is managing relief operations perfectly well on its own despite evidence that many of the 2.5 million survivors are living in misery - with little food, shelter, medical help, clean drinking water or sanitation.

About 78,000 people are confirmed dead and 56,000 missing in the cyclone, according to the government. Aid agencies, however, say the death toll in Myanmar, also known as Burma, could be 128,000.

A glimmer of hope was raised Sunday when British Foreign Office Minister for Asia Lord Malloch-Brown said Myanmar may accept a compromise, allowing Western ships to deliver aid in the country's cyclone-hit delta region using Asian intermediaries.

"We're just going to have see what negotiations in the coming days by the Asian leaders, by the U.N. secretary-general, achieve," Malloch-Brown told the British Broadcasting Corp. "I think you're going to see quite dramatic steps by the Burmese to open up."

But he suggested an agreement was still some way off.

A U.N. report said Saturday that emergency relief from the international community had reached an estimated 500,000 people only.

"This is inhuman," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the BBC, accusing the military regime of caring more about its own survival than its people's welfare.

The junta says it has completed relief operations and now will turn to reconstruction. It has barred foreign aid experts, including the U.N.'s international staff, from traveling to the worst-hit Irrawaddy delta.

Aid agencies have been forced to depend on their limited local Myanmar staff to distribute relief in the delta.

On Sunday, the regime accused foreign news organizations of falsely reporting that the government was refusing or hindering international relief aid.

"Some foreign news agencies broadcast false information and thus some international and regional organizations are assuming that the government has been rejecting and preventing aid for storm victims," a government statement said. "Those who have been to Myanmar understand the actual fact."

But 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."

The U.N. report said the ruling generals were even forbidding the import of communications equipment, hampering already difficult contact among relief agencies.

The government has ordered that all 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, it said.

The military junta's xenophobia stems from the fear that allowing foreign aid workers to mingle with ordinary people will embolden them to rebel against 46 years of authoritarian rule.

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. The doctor declined to give her name, fearing government reprisal.

[sistatee-2009]

The U.N. never met a junta it didn''t like.

[babooph]

US propagandists are not mentioning their refusal of Cuban aid in N Orleans-they were also left to rot -where was the UN then ??

[edward1975-2009]

I got an idea, why doesn''t the useless U.N. move to Burma and get a firsthand look. This would be a great place for these spineless, freeloading idiots.

[nyeinc]

Shari Villarosa, the senior diplomat at the United States Embassy in Yangon, said the military leaders%u2019 reluctance to admit more foreign aid and aid workers exasperated ordinary people, whose discontent over sharp inflation and political repression erupted last September in an uprising led by Buddhist monks. %u201CAnger is still there,%u201D Ms. Villarosa said in an interview on Sunday. %u201CDiscontent is still there. And now there is a growing discontent that there is international assistance out there that can be brought in, so why aren%u2019t we getting it?%u201D (A New York Times Correspondent in Yangon, Myanmar, Burmese Leader Visits Refugees, The New York Times, May 19, 2008)

So saying, a step towards a people%u2019s power revolution has been made by a veteran expert of those revolutions, Shari Villarosa whose career assignments, found in the public-accessible CV, coincide with the occurrence of people%u2019s power revolutions, the latest being in Indonesia in 1997-8.

[kerpalguy]

The UN is doing nothing but twiddling their thumbs. They need to get with the program and put all the pressure available to them on the criminal Junta. And it''s Burma - not Myanmar.

[dapex-2009]

Why do you call Burma "Myanmar?" The US, UK, Australia and New Zealand do not recognize this illegal junta, its government nor its name. The proper name is "Burma," as you see on the BBC.

[andrew_693]

what Myanmar needs is someone to overthrow this dictatorship ran from China. A country that leads the world, that believes in real democracy and freedom and stands up when human rights are violated by dictators. Unfortunately, that country doesn''t exist since after world war 2. Hopefully another more just country in the future will have the balls to stand up to the plate and lead by example.