Burma holds back huge aid operation

A massive international aid effort for devastated Burma was being kept on hold by the country’s secretive ruling military today.

Privately the UN is becoming frustrated at delaying tactics by the junta, which has kept the impoverished nation isolated for five decades to maintain its iron-fisted control.

“Visas are still a problem. It is not clear when it will be sorted out,” the minutes of a meeting of the UN relief task force revealed.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki moon wants to arrange a meeting with high-ranking officials.

Relief teams and aid material are waiting to deploy from Thailand, Singapore, Italy, France, Sweden, Britain, South Korea, Australia, Israel, the US, Poland, and Japan to help deal with the aftermath of cyclone Nargis which has killed at least 22,000 with fears there are tens of thousands of more victims..

However, Burma has so far only accepted aid from traditional friends China, India and Indonesia.

Britain offered about £5m (€6.3m) to help the crisis, and the US offered more than€1.9m in aid.

President Bush said Washington was prepared to use the navy to help search for the dead and missing.

However, the Burma military, which regularly accuses the United States of trying to subvert its rule, was unlikely to accept its military presence in its territory.

The junta normally restricts the access of foreign officials and organizations to the country, and aid groups were struggling to deliver relief goods.

“Most urgent need is food and water,” said Andrew Kirkwood, head of Save the Children in Rangoon. “Many people are getting sick. The whole place is under salt water and there is nothing to drink. They can’t use tablets to purify salt water,” he said.

Save the Children distributed food, plastic sheeting, cooking utensils and chlorine tablets to 230,000 people.

Hungry crowds of survivors stormed the few shops that opened in the stricken Irrawaddy delta.

Corpses floated in salty flood waters and witnesses said survivors tried desperately to reach dry ground on boats using blankets as sails. The UN said a million people were homeless.

“Basically the entire lower delta region is under water,” said Richard Horsey, Bangkok-based spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid.

A 'major, major disaster'

“Teams are talking about bodies floating around in the water,” he said. This is “a major, major disaster we’re dealing with.”

In Rangoon, many angry residents say they were given vague and incorrect information about the approaching storm and no instructions on how to cope when it struck.

Officials in India said they had warned Burma that Cyclone Nargis was headed for the country two days before it hit.

The state-run Indian Meteorological Department had been keeping a close watch on the depression in the Bay of Bengal since it was first spotted on April 28 and sent regular updates about its progress to all the countries in its path, a spokesman said.

State television news quoted a government spokesman as reassuring people that the situation was “returning to normal”.

But city residents faced new challenges as markets doubled prices of rice, charcoal and bottled water.

Electricity was restored in a small portion of Yangon but most city residents, who rely on wells with electric pumps, had no water. Vendors sold bottled water at more than double the normal price.

Price of rice and cooking oil also skyrocketed.

Burma has been under military rule since 1962. Its government has been widely criticized for suppressing pro-democracy parties such as the one led by Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been under house arrest for more than 12 of the past 18 years.

At least 31 people were killed and thousands more were detained in September when the military cracked down on peaceful protests led by Buddhist monks and democracy advocates.