U.N. Chief Convinces Myanmar To Accept Aid

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says Myanmar's junta has agreed to allow "all aid workers" into the country to help cyclone survivors.

Ban's comments came after a crucial two-hour meeting Friday with the previously inflexible junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe.

When asked if he thought the agreement was a breakthrough, Ban told reporters, "I think so."

Myanmar's junta has until now refused to allow an unimpeded influx of foreign aid and experts to reach survivors of the May 2-3 Cyclone Nargis. At least 78,000 people were killed and another 56,000 are unaccounted for.

An estimated 2.5 million people are in need of aid. Most are women and children at growing risk of starvation, disease and exposure to monsoon rains.

Ban arrived at the remote capital of Naypyitaw after a flight from Yangon, 250 miles to the south. He witnessed some of the cyclone's devastation during a carefully choreographed tour Thursday.

Urging Shwe - who had earlier refused to take Ban's calls from New York - to allow the aid and experts to reach survivors had been the highest priority on the secretary-general's agenda.

Pro-democracy activists had urged Ban to also bring up the fate of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose latest period of detention expires Monday. A string of U.N. envoys have in the past failed to spring the democracy icon from house arrest, confronting a junta that has proved virtually impervious to outside pressure.

The 76-year-old Than Shwe - reclusive, superstitious and known as "the bulldog" for his stubbornness - has held virtually unassailable power since 1992.

As Ban's visit proceeded, the regime appeared to ease some of its restrictions on foreigners.

France-based Doctors Without Borders said it now had some foreign staffers working in four areas of the hard-hit Irrawaddy delta, which had previously been virtually off limits to non-Myanmar relief workers.

A second French cargo plane loaded with 40 tons of relief supplies was due to land Friday in Yangon, while Canada said it would lend its biggest military aircraft, a C-17 cargo lifter, to deliver U.N. World Food Program helicopters to Myanmar.

The regime had earlier allowed the U.N. agency to bring in 10 helicopters to fly emergency aid to stranded victims.

Ban's firsthand look at the devastation wrought by the storm left the secretary-general shaken Thursday, even though the areas to which he was taken were far from the worst-hit.

"I'm very upset by what I've seen," Ban told reporters after a walk through a makeshift relief camp where 500 people huddled in blue tents at Kyondah village in Dedaye township, about 45 miles southwest of Yangon, Myanmar's largest city.

Myanmar's military regime has been eager to show it has the relief effort under control despite spurning the help of foreign disaster experts and has trotted out officials to give statistics-laden lectures to make the point.

But the U.N. says up to 2.5 million cyclone survivors face hunger, homelessness and potential outbreaks of deadly diseases, especially in the lower-lying areas of the Irrawaddy delta close to the sea. It estimates that aid has reached only about 25 percent of them.

The places Ban visited - the Kyondah Relief Camp and the town of Mawlamyinegyun, an aid distribution point - seemed well-organized.

But the destruction in the areas around them was relatively mild compared to that farther southwest in the townships of Labutta and Bogalay. Officials gave no explanation of why Ban was not taken to those areas, where the preponderance of dead and missing are reported.

The International Red Cross said that rivers and ponds in Bogalay remained full of corpses, and that many people in remote areas had received no aid.

U.N. officials traveling with Ban said they were discussing with Chinese authorities whether Ban could tour the earthquake zone in Sichuan directly after leaving Myanmar. The officials requested , citing protocol.

The trip, which has not been finalized, would give Ban the chance to compare the two countries' responses and urge China - Myanmar's biggest ally - to put its weight behind opening the flow of aid workers.

As Ban began his visit, foreign aid agencies stressed the need to quickly reach survivors suffering from disease, hunger and lack of shelter.

"In 30-plus years of humanitarian emergency work this is by far - by far - the largest case of emergency need we've ever seen," said Lionel Rosenblatt, president of U.S.-based Refugees International.

Yangon residents did not seem optimistic that Ban's visit would make a difference.

"Don't just talk. You must take action," said Eain Daw Bar Tha, abbot of a Buddhist monastery on Yangon's outskirts. "The U.N. must directly help the people with helicopters to bring food, clothes and clean water to the really damaged places."

At the United Nations in New York, France pushed for a U.N. resolution authorizing the delivery of aid to survivors "by all means necessary" if pressure from Ban and Myanmar's neighbors does not open the aid pipeline quickly.