Myanmar Junta Pressed by UN, U.S., India to Take Aid (Update1)

By Paul Tighe and Demian McLean

May 13 (Bloomberg) -- The United Nations, U.S. and India told Myanmar's military rulers to allow international aid to reach the country, where more than 1.5 million people need help after Tropical Cyclone Nargis struck 10 days ago.

The junta must ``put its people's lives first,'' UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday in New York. The delay is ``another reason why the world ought to be angry and condemn the government,'' President George W. Bush said in an interview with CBS Radio.

As many as 100,000 people may have died in the disaster, according to UN officials. The death toll reached 33,416 people with 29,770 missing, Myanmar's state radio announced late yesterday, according to China's Xinhua News Agency.

Myanmar, a country of 48 million people ruled by the military since 1962, has accepted a fraction of the relief offered by the world. The UN estimates that only a third of the people needing aid have received help as flood waters still cover areas of the southern Irrawaddy delta, the worst-hit region.

The U.S., which has led international calls for the junta to return the country formerly known as Burma to democracy, was allowed to land its first aid flight in Myanmar yesterday.

``It's a drop in a bucket for what they are going to need,'' White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said at a briefing yesterday in Washington.

Relief Flights

The U.S. won permission to land more relief flights in Myanmar and boosted its aid offer fivefold to $16.25 million yesterday after Navy Admiral Timothy Keating, chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, met with Myanmar naval officers.

Keating was on the first U.S. aid flight, said Ky Luu, director of the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance in Washington. Myanmar has rejected help from U.S. naval ships in the region.

India, which shares a 1,460-kilometer (907-mile) border with Myanmar, called on the junta to accept more aid when Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee spoke by telephone with his counterpart Nyan Win.

Mukherjee pledged more assistance from India and ``also urged Myanmar to accept international relief supplies to supplement their efforts,'' India's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its Web site.

Two Indian navy ships and five aircraft have brought medical supplies and equipment, including tents, to Myanmar, the ministry said.

Thai Visit

Thailand's Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej will visit Myanmar tomorrow, Foreign Minister Noppadol Pattama said today in Bangkok. He had planned to visit May 11.

Samak ``will definitely travel to Myanmar tomorrow,'' Pattama said. ``He will help coordinate the aid between international countries and the Myanmar government.''

Myanmar's military leader General Than Shwe has refused, during the past five days, to respond to repeated attempts at telephone contact, Ban said, adding he has sent two letters to the junta head.

``I want to register my deep concern and immense frustration,'' Ban told reporters. ``Unless more aid gets into the country very quickly, we face an outbreak of infectious diseases that could dwarf'' the disaster caused by the cyclone.

The amount of food that has been allowed to enter the country ``is less than a tenth'' of what is needed, Ban said.

UN Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes said the junta has approved only 34 of more than 100 visa applications by relief workers.

More Workers

Less than 10 percent of the international workers needed to respond to the disaster are on the ground, the World Food Program said yesterday. About a fifth of the 375 metric tons of food that needs to be delivered each day is reaching cyclone victims, it said.

Myanmar's ``response is not good enough,'' Bush told CBS. ``Here they are with a major catastrophe on their hands and do not allow the full might of a compassionate world to help them.''

International aid supplies are being successfully transported by Myanmar workers to disaster-hit areas, Xinhua cited Myanmar state radio as saying.

``What the people really need now is food and sanitation,'' Joe Lowry, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said yesterday in the former capital, Yangon. ``You've got lots of people living homeless next to pools of filthy, standing water'' that can cause skin diseases, diarrhea and respiratory infections.

To contact the reporters on this story: Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net; Demian McLean in Washington at dmclean8@bloomberg.net.