As magnitude of Myanmar loss grows, aid arrives

By Seth Mydans and Helene Cooper

BANGKOK (IHT): A powerful cyclone that destroyed a vast swath of coastal Myanmar and left many thousands of people dead prompted the country's military leaders to allow some foreign aid groups to deliver relief supplies on Tuesday. But the ruling junta came under increasing pressure to further open its doors — and even relax its tight political grip — to grapple with the growing disaster.

The Myanmar government put its tally of deaths since Cyclone Nargis struck early Saturday at 22,500 and said 41,000 people were missing. Such early estimates often prove inaccurate, and the wide path of this cyclone, which destroyed homes across the fertile Irrawaddy Delta and into Yangon, the nation's main city, left a large area of destruction, complicating rescue efforts and damage assessments for days or weeks to come.

Foreign governments and aid organizations worldwide began mobilizing a major relief operation, and some aid began flowing into the country. But President George W. Bush, speaking in Washington, continued a campaign to pressure the military government to allow fuller access to international relief teams and private charity groups.

His message mixed a new offer of American help with renewed criticism of a government the United States has denounced as one of the world's most repressive. But some international aid workers and foreign leaders said they feared that political pressure could make it more difficult to deliver aid in a timely manner.

"Our message is to the military rulers: let the United States come help you to help the people," Bush said Tuesday morning at a ceremony held to commemorate his signing of legislation to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy advocate who has been under house arrest in Myanmar for 12 of the last 18 years. "We want to do a lot more."

While Myanmar, formerly Burma, has so far accepted only a trickle of aid, the country's information minister, Kyaw Hsan, said Tuesday that the country would be seeking assistance "from at home and abroad." A United Nations spokeswoman in Geneva said disaster assessment officials were awaiting visas to enter Myanmar.

Maung Maung Swe, minister for relief and resettlement, said the cyclone's deadliest aspect was the surge of water it forced inland from the Andaman Sea.

"More deaths were caused by the tidal wave than the storm itself," he said, in the first official description of the destruction. "The wave was up to 12 feet high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages. They did not have anywhere to flee."

A spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program said that as many as one million people might have lost their homes and that some villages were almost completely destroyed. That estimate appeared to be a rough assessment based on aerial and satellite photographs of the affected region.

Bush's call for openness from Myanmar came a day after Laura Bush, the U.S. first lady, criticized the country's military leaders for failing to warn people before the cyclone hit on Saturday.

In reply, Australia's foreign minister, Stephen Smith, was among those who urged countries to focus on helping Myanmar instead of criticizing its government. "The priority now is rendering assistance to thousands of displaced people who urgently need our assistance," Smith said in Hong Kong.

Likewise, Joel Charny, vice president for policy at Refugees International, a Washington-based aid organization, said the Bush administration's approach could be counterproductive. "To stand up and say, One message is we want to help and the other message is the government is incompetent, and oh, by the way, tomorrow we're giving a congressional medal to Aung San Suu Kyi, well, that gets their back up," Charny said. "I'm not saying the U.S. shouldn't have concerns about democracy. I'm saying that the idea is you try to make it easier rather than harder for the regime to take on international assistance."

White House officials countered that Myanmar's military leaders had long known the United States' position on human rights abuses there, and should be doing all they could to get help to the ravaged areas quickly.

"Maybe it's time to bury their pride and finally help their people out for the first time in decades," said Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman.

Shaken by the scope of the disaster, the authorities in Myanmar said Tuesday that in the areas most affected by the cyclone they would delay a vote on a new constitution that would cement the military's grip on power. The referendum will still go ahead on Saturday in other parts of the country but will be delayed until May 24 in the regions hardest hit, where more than a third of the population lives.

The postponement of the vote, a centerpiece of government policy, along with an appeal for foreign disaster aid, were difficult concessions by an insular military junta that portrays itself as all-powerful and self-sufficient, political analysts said.

"The task is very wide and extensive and the government needs the cooperation of the people and well-wishers from at home and abroad," Information Minister Kyaw Hsan said at a news conference.

"We will not hide anything," he said. "Please ask the people not to be duped by rumors or fabrication."

With few defenders around the world, Myanmar's military rulers have often come under fire for their suppression of dissent, their brutal crackdowns on pro-democracy demonstrators and their treatment of the democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi. Now their slow response to the outpouring of aid offers from around the world has come under fire as well.

International aid agencies began distributing food in Yangon on Tuesday, but there was uncertainty that the assistance would reach people stranded without shelter in the more remote reaches of the Irrawaddy Delta.

A growing number of countries have pledged aid but bad roads, a lack of government cooperation and a breakdown in telecommunications could hamper relief efforts. Even before the storm hit, many towns and villages in the area were accessible only by boat or helicopter.

"If it were a different situation we would be mobilizing some helicopters now," said Tony Banbury, regional director of the United Nations World Food Program. "We recognize that the government may not want international helicopters flying in their country for better or worse."

Two of Myanmar's neighbors sent supplies immediately: Thailand dispatched a transport plane on Tuesday loaded with food and medicine to Yangon, and India sent two naval ships carrying food, tents, blankets, clothing and medicine.

The Bush administration said Tuesday that it was offering $3 million in aid. But the American aid is to be funneled through a team from the Agency for International Development that had not been permitted to enter Myanmar as of late Tuesday.

In addition, Bush said he was prepared to use navy warships and aircraft "to help find those who have lost their lives, to help find the missing, to help stabilize the situation." Still, he added: "In order to do so, the military junta must allow our disaster assessment teams into the country."

A Burmese political analyst called Bush's condition "a cheap shot." The analyst, Aung Nain Oo, who is based in Thailand, said: "The people are dying. This is no time for a political message to be aired. This is a time for relief. No one is asking for anything like this except the United States."

At the United Nations on Tuesday, Rashid Khalikov, director of the office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs, said workers from his agency had yet to enter the country to help the United Nations officials already there.

United Nations aid workers — he did not say how many — applied for visas at the embassy in Bangkok only on Tuesday, Khalikov said, because the embassy was closed Monday for a Thai holiday. He said that by late Tuesday the visas had not been issued, and that the United Nations was urging Myanmar to cut through the red tape it normally imposes on visitors.

Khalikov said natural disasters presented major challenges for any government and that it was too soon to gauge the extent of Myanmar's cooperation with the international aid effort.

Residents of Yangon, reached by telephone, described a city in tatters, with fallen trees, a lack of power and water and, in the poorer outskirts, badly damaged homes. Tank trucks were selling water from Inya Lake, in the center of the city, they said.

The high winds blew roofs off the cages at the zoo, one person reported, and a baboon or gibbon was spotted Monday sitting on top of a giant plastic ruby in the middle of a traffic circle near Shwedagon pagoda.

"He refused to get down," the resident said, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a government ban on unofficial news. "This afternoon, when my driver and I drove by, the ruby and the monkey were gone."

There were several accounts over the weekend of monks leaving their monasteries to help clear away storm wreckage, even as the military offered little help to residents.

"Our biggest fear is that the aftermath could be more lethal than the storm itself," said Caryl Stern, who leads the United Nations Children's Fund, or Unicef, in the United States.

Unicef said that it had sent five assessment teams into affected areas and that relief supplies were being prepared for delivery.

Seth Mydans reported from Bangkok, and Helene Cooper from Washington. Andy Newman contributed reporting from the United Nations, and Thomas Fuller from Bangkok.