Thai ties bind Myanmar cyclone relief

By Brian McCartan CHIANG MAI, Thailand - As the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bids to play a front-line role in the relief efforts in cyclone-hit Myanmar, members' respective bilateral policies towards the military regime promise to complicate and potentially undermine a collective and coherent group response.

Nowhere is that more clear than with Thailand, which has long maintained strong commercial ties with Myanmar's military government. Bangkok was notably the first capital to order the shipment relief supplies just days after the disaster first struck on May 2 and 3. Bangkok is now serving as willing host to a logistics

center for the United Nations and international humanitarian aid agencies responding to the cyclone.

United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon's request on May 19 to use Bangkok's former Don Muang international airport as a logistical hub for relief efforts was readily agreed to by the Thai government, although use had already begun a day earlier. Airport hangars have been provided to the UN's World Food Program to store supplies set for shipment to Myanmar, while the United States has used the large military airfield at U Tapao for its relief flights into Yangon.

Relief supplies are also being sent in convoys from the Thai border town of Mae Sot, sometimes in Thai Army trucks, and earlier this week a Thai medical team was the first foreign emergency team to gain access to the country. They have even been allowed to work in the Irrawaddy Delta region, the worst-hit area to which the junta has restricted foreign aid worker access.

Thailand has served as interlocutor between Myanmar's government and the UN and US to persuade the ruling junta to open its doors to international relief efforts. The reclusive government had earlier refused to allow in Western aid and still has not allowed Western aid workers into the disaster hit areas. While the Thai Air Force was able to broker a deal to let US Air Force relief flights in, other efforts have not been as successful.

But even while sending emergency supplies, providing support for relief efforts and acting as a liaison between the reclusive generals and the outside world, Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundarvej's government has simultaneously been busy cementing business deals and drawing up policies that threaten a harder line against the various exile opposition groups based in Thailand.

Samak eventually traveled to Myanmar on May 14, in a diplomatic bid to gain wider access for relief aid. During the visit, Myanmar state-run television showed clips of Samak being led around relief centers outside Yangon filled with blue tents, where he greeted refugees, checked out relief supplies and even watched television and joked with refugee children.

These spic-and-span camps have since been derided by opposition groups and critics of the junta's relief efforts as show pieces, while the great majority of the estimated two million people affected by the cyclone fight for their lives amid insufficient shelter, food and medicine. The World Food Program has estimated that only 30% of those affected by the disaster have been reached with any relief supplies.

Amid reports of theft of aid supplies, movement restrictions, and a general official neglect, Samak surprised many with his appraisal of the junta's relief efforts when he said on May 14 that "from what I have seen I am impressed with their management". He went on to say that the generals had given him a "guarantee" that there had been no outbreaks of disease or any starvation among cyclone survivors.

He notably failed to gain more access to disaster areas for the UN and other international relief organizations and said he was satisfied that the junta "have their own team to cope with the situation" and did not need foreign experts. Samak's counterintuitive remarks are hardly surprising given the commercial results of his previous trip to Myanmar in March 14 and a reciprocal official visit by Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein to Thailand on April 29, just days before the cyclone hit.

During his visit in March, Samak controversially agreed to disperse the remaining funds from a 4 billion baht ($125 million) EX-IM Bank of Thailand soft loan for communications equipment first initiated by ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's government. Thaksin is currently under investigation for alleged irregularities surrounding the government-to-government loan, which critics have said benefited his then family-owned company, the Shin Corporation.

The two governments also agreed to move ahead with the controversial Ta Sang dam project on the Salween River. Human rights and environmental organizations allege widespread abuses have clouded the project's development. Other infrastructure projects were also agreed, including the development of a deep sea port at Tavoy on the Andaman Sea in the Tenasserim Division of southeastern Myanmar.

During the April meeting, the port was further discussed as were agreements for Thai-invested contract farming of rubber and palm oil plantations in Myanmar. Thein Sein announced that around 100,000 rai (16 hectare) near Tavoy would be set aside as an industrial zone for energy related industries including petrochemicals and refineries.

Thailand is currently Myanmar's third-largest trading partner and largest energy importer and as of 2007 had paid-up investments of US$1.3 billion in the neighboring country, according to statistics from Thai Foreign Trade Department. Some contend, however, that those budding commercial deals have compromised Thailand's ability to play the role of honest broker between the junta and outside world in the wake of the cyclone crisis.

While on one hand playing an active role in providing relief to cyclone survivors, on the other Bangkok has made almost no public statements denouncing the regime's widely condemned, including by the UN and US, closed-door approach to accepting international aid and foreign relief workers. Instead, Samak's government took the rather tactless opportunity of an emergency cyclone-related meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the military regime for the Tavoy port and a separate road link project. The MoU was signed on May 19 by Thai foreign minister Noppadon Pattama and his Myanmar counterpart Nyan Win.

The big-ticket infrastructure project envisions expanding the current port at Tavoy and building a road linking it with Thailand's main port Laem Chabang outside of Bangkok. The expanded port will be able to accommodate larger vessels and cut days off the travel time of current shipments which must navigate around the Malay peninsula. Thai Transportation Minister Santi Prompat has said the port project will cost between 40 and 50 billion baht ($1.2-1.6 billion) and that another 100 billion baht ($3.1 billion) will be invested to develop the industrial zone.

According to the minister, PTT Plc, the Thai oil company has expressed interest in setting up an oil refinery in Myanmar and the construction of a pipeline to pump oil products to Thailand. Thai Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama says the project will take five to six years to complete, while a construction survey is expected to be completed by the end of this year. Once built, Pattama said private Thai firms will be granted a concession to manage the port on an initial five year extendable contract.

The MoU also covers the construction of a 130-kilometer road to connect Myanmar's Tenasserim Division with and Thailand's western Kanchanburi province.

The cyclone may have by default brought a temporary reprieve for Myanmar's ethnic and political opposition groups, refugees, internally displaced persons and the nongovernmental organizations which assist them, while the junta redirects its military focus on maintaining stability in cyclone-hit areas. That could change soon, however, if reports hold true that Samak agreed to Thein Sein to step up monitoring of opposition groups active in Thailand in exchange for closer commercial ties.

According to people familiar with the policy shift, Thai authorities will be tasked with cracking down on the insurgent Karen National Union, which operates in remote border areas. Meanwhile known political opposition group leaders are to be closely monitored and their movements severely restricted.

Exile-run media groups long based in Thailand would also be monitored to determine whether their coverage was harmful to relations between the two countries. Cross-border movements would also be severely curtailed under the new hard-line policy, including the flow of food, medicine and other supplies sent by local and international relief organizations to villagers displaced by the ongoing armed conflict between the junta and rebel groups.

With the huge international attention now drawn to Myanmar and the region in the wake of the cyclone, the policy has not yet come into force. Already a planned forced repatriation of newly arrived Karen refugees in Thailand's Mae Hong Son province was averted by the UNHCR, who alerted the Thai government to the likely bad press coverage that would result if it forced back refugees during a time of crisis. Several NGO workers noted, however, that this could all change once attention shifts elsewhere, which is already starting to happen with the earthquake disaster in China.

Thailand's Myanmar policy will certainly benefit from ASEAN's now assumed front-line role in dealing with the cyclone disaster. Each ASEAN member has agreed to provide 30 medical personnel, of which the Thai medical team was the first to arrive. The UN, however, says this international response is still not enough to stave off disease outbreaks and that the country's doors need to be opened to all foreign experts to avert a wider humanitarian crisis.

Critics say ASEAN's intervention will only allow Myanmar's military regime to hide behind the group's long held non-interference policy in member states' internal affairs. Myanmar's intransigence has in the past tried the 10-member group's patience, but with this recent agreement ASEAN has once again provided Myanmar a buffer from international criticism.

That's clearly the preference of Thailand and a benefit to Bangkok's business interests.

Brian McCartan is a Chiang Mai-based freelance journalist. He may be reached at brianpm@comcast.net.
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Myanmar Junta Drops Ban on Cyclone Relief Workers (Update1)

By Ed Johnson May 23 (Bloomberg) -- Myanmar's junta dropped its ban on international aid workers carrying out cyclone relief operations in the country, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, after talks with military chief Senior General Than Shwe.

``He has agreed to allow all aid workers regardless of nationalities,'' Ban told reporters in the capital, Naypyidaw, according to the UN delegation. ``He has taken quite a flexible position on this matter.''

The military leader also agreed to allow the airport in the former capital, Yangon, to be used to distribute international aid, Ban said.

More than 130,000 people are dead or missing after Cyclone Nargis hit the southern rice-growing Irrawaddy River delta three weeks ago, sweeping away villages, crops and livestock. Myanmar's military, which has run the nation of 48 million people since 1962, barred international workers from the worst-affected areas and rejected offers of helicopters, trucks and aid from U.S. warships anchored off the coast.

The agreement on aid workers ``is going to help with our operation enormously,'' UN World Food Program country director Chris Kaye said by telephone from Yangon.

``We understand that they are going to be allowed to work in the delta,'' Kaye said. The agreement will help the WFP ``ramp up the scale of operations,'' he added.

More Aid

Ban arrived in the country formerly known as Burma yesterday to press the junta to grant international workers access to the delta and accept more aid.

``This is a significant step forward, and could be a turning point in the aid response,'' Brian Agland, CARE's country director in Myanmar, said in an e-mailed statement today.

Agland and other leaders of aid organizations will meet with Ban tomorrow to plan coordination of the relief effort.

Ban met yesterday with General Thein Sein, the nation's prime minister, who took issue when the UN chief said the disaster was too great for the junta to handle and that more aid was urgently needed, according to a UN statement.

After meeting the prime minister, Ban expressed frustration at ``the inability of the aid workers to bring assistance at the right time to the affected areas,'' according to the UN.

The junta estimates the cyclone may have caused $10.7 billion in damage to property and affected 5.5 million people, Ramesh Shrestha, the UN Children's Fund representative for Myanmar, said yesterday after meeting with U Soe Tha, the country's development minister.

Donors to Meet

Delegates from 31 countries have registered to attend a May 25 donor conference in Yangon sponsored by the UN and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. While the international community wants to focus on improving the aid effort, the ruling generals want money for reconstruction.

Shari Villarosa, the charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Yangon, will attend the conference, State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters yesterday in Washington.

The Bush administration has led international criticism of the junta for blocking the relief effort and for rights abuses, including the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi.

The opposition leader, whose National League for Democracy won elections in 1990 that were rejected by the junta, has spent 12 of the past 18 years in detention and has been under house arrest at her home in Yangon since May 2003.

Pro-democracy campaigners are demanding that Suu Kyi, 62, be freed this month, saying the junta's legal authority to detain her will expire. Under the State Protection Law, the regime can only hold someone deemed a security threat for five years without trial or charge, according to the Burma Campaign U.K.

`Killing Thousands'

``Ban Ki-moon must meet with Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD leaders whilst he is in Burma,'' said campaign director Mark Farmaner in a statement. ``The UN failed to take action that the people of Burma called for to help restore democracy. Now the regime they left in power is killing thousands more through the denial of aid.''

The junta will hold a referendum on a draft constitution tomorrow in the areas worst hit by the cyclone, two weeks after the rest of the country voted. The charter was approved by 92.4 percent of voters with a 99 percent turnout on May 10, according to state media.

The junta says the referendum will pave the way for elections in 2010. The U.S. and opposition groups in Myanmar say the ballot was rigged and accuse the generals of trying to prolong their reign.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ed Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net.

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US, aid groups hope to widen small Myanmar opening

WASHINGTON, May 22 (Reuters) - Myanmar's decision to allow a U.S. aid official to tour the Cyclone Nargis disaster zone marked a small opening by the military government, but real help for millions of victims requires more expert access, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

William Berger, head of a U.S. Disaster Assistance Response Team for Myanmar, had joined other donor government representatives and aid workers for a three-day Myanmar government-organized tour of the Irrawaddy Delta area.

"We see this as an opening, but it is not sufficient," said Ky Luu, director of foreign disaster assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

He told reporters that reaching all of the estimated 2.4 million people affected by the cyclone would require "tripling or quadrupling" aid experts and relief supplies.

U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Berger would use any meetings with officials of the former Burma to press for wider access for outside experts to assess needs.

"We're glad that he's able to at least go and make some small observations on the situation, but that certainly isn't the equivalent of him either being allowed in on his own or collectively with the DART team to do what they would normally do in this situation," he said.

While Berger visited Myanmar, the rest of his 10-member team of relief experts remained in Thailand awaiting visas, another official said.

U.S. emergency relief, which totaled $20.5 million as of Wednesday, would continue to flow to Myanmar through NGO partners and the United States would attend a weekend donors conference in Myanmar, Casey said.

But he added: "Before we can really offer any kind of additional assistance, we and other donors need some kind of independent assessment of the situation."

Myanmar's secretive ruling military has limited access by outside experts to the disaster zone since the May 2 storm and sea surge left nearly 134,000 dead or missing, but some foreign aid groups have been working with their local staff and community volunteers to reach victims.

"People are getting supplies to a fraction of the entire group of affected people -- about 25 to 30 percent of the affected people," said International Rescue Committee Chairwoman Anne Richard.

"We are getting people in but we have to get more experts in," she told reporters in Washington. (Reporting by Paul Eckert; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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Trauma risk for Burma aid workers

By Chris Hogg
BBC News, Bangkok
For the aid agencies who have struggled for more than two weeks to get relief supplies to the victims of Cyclone Nargis, there is now a new factor that could compromise their ability to operate effectively.

Their staff are exhausted.

What makes this disaster different from others before is the fact that those trying to deal with this emergency have had to rely so heavily on local staff.

Burma's initial decision not to allow foreign relief workers in, and to prevent foreigners already in Burma from entering the Irrawaddy Delta, meant the international relief organisations were forced to tear up the rulebook and instead do the best they could with the resources they already had in place in the country.
Many of these Burmese staff are experienced operators who know the area well, but the pressure on them has been relentless.

One Burmese relief worker working with Christian Aid said she has been working non-stop since the cyclone.

"How can we take a day off when we know how many of our fellow citizens our suffering?" she asked.

The charity says its local staff feel all the responsibility is on their shoulders. Another relief worker lost his wife and three sons in the cyclone.

"He has not stopped working since the cyclone struck," his colleague said. "He has thrown himself into helping others as a way of coping with his grief."

'Shocked and numb'

Experience from other disasters suggests that people who identify more readily with the victims are at greater risk of developing psychological problems.


The symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in one society might be quite different from those in other cultures, who might express stress differently
Dr Peter Salama,
Unicef

Local staff, likely to identify more readily with the victims than those from overseas, are more likely to have higher rates of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Those who deal with traumatic events like handling dead bodies also have a higher likelihood of developing psychological problems.

Research into the aftermath of the Kosovo war in 1999 suggests two groups of relief workers are most at risk of developing stress-related problems.

First time volunteers who may be wholly unprepared for the job, who do not know what to expect or who have unrealistic expectations of their ability to make an impact are the most at risk.

The other group is the more experienced experts from overseas, who travel from disaster to disaster and who as a result may have built up cumulative amounts of stress.

Doctors say those facing extremes of stress often change their behaviour in an effort to find a new internal equilibrium.

"People feel shocked and numb, fearful and anxious, sometimes helpless and hopeless," said Professor Richard Williams from the University of Glamorgan in South Wales. "They feel guilty. Sometimes they feel angry."

As well as emotional reactions, there are psychological reactions to look out for, like poor concentration or poor memory.

Some lose confidence. Others feel they have to be over-vigilant. People regress into less mature patterns of behaviour.

"The key here is not that you have bad reactions, it's how quickly you get over them," the professor said. "If these feelings persist for a few weeks then it's worth taking much greater notice of them."

Although there has been a fair amount of research in recent years into the effects of severe stress on expatriate relief workers in disaster zones, there has been less work done on how local staff are affected.

Other studies have suggested that in Asia stress often triggers psychosomatic disorders - people start to display physical symptoms.

"We will need to look out for this when trying to help staff working in Myanmar [Burma]," said Dr Peter Salama, Chief of Health at Unicef.

"The symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in one society might be quite different from those in other cultures who might express stress differently."

'Watchful waiting'

The Australian charity CARE International is already looking at how to support those of its staff who have been working in the delta for the last two weeks without a break.

A family sit in a tent on 20 May 2008 (Image: Unicef)
Survivors could also face stress-related difficulties, experts say
Its representative in Rangoon, Peter Newson, says they are aware these people will need a lot of psycho-social support.

"We have to be very careful, though, to tailor that support to the Myanmar [Burmese] culture in order to make it effective," he says.

That means encouraging them to talk to monks, to their families and to each other. In some cases writing down their experiences too.

"And that's not only important for our staff," Mr Newson said. "It will be important for the survivors in the delta too."

Dr Salama says when it comes to trying to reduce the stress on the front line staff, there are "common sense responses".

These include making telecommunications equipment available so it is easier to call home, setting up peer to peer networks so people can discuss with others what they have been through, teaching stress management techniques and creating a culture where people can talk more readily.

The doctors agree it is not unusual to experience some or all of the symptoms of severe or acute psychiatric trauma after dealing with a disaster like this.

But these days, according to Professor Williams, the approach that is often taken is to undertake what he calls "a month of watchful waiting or psychological first aid".

"We give people a lot of support, help them to return to a more normal set of arrangements as quickly as possible," he said.

"With that, most people will soon begin to recover and their stress levels will start to come down. If after a month they are still highly stressed then that is something to be taken more seriously."

As Burma agrees to allow more outside experts in from neighbouring countries, the pressure on the aid agencies' local staff should begin to ease.

But such is the scale of the disaster and the size of the task still to be done, the stress on front line staff and others will still be considerable for many weeks and months to come, making it all the more important that agencies have plans in place to recognise and deal with the problem.

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Hollywood celebrities urge human rights in Myanmar

Stars including Will Ferrell and Jennifer Aniston call for release of the Southeast Asian country's Nobel-winning Aung San Suu Kyi and establishment of democracy there.
By Richard C. Paddock, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 23, 2008
Dozens of Hollywood celebrities have joined together to call attention to the repressive military regime in Myanmar and the plight of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent more than a decade under house arrest.

In more than 30 public-service spots that are being released online daily this month, actors and artists including Will Ferrell, Sarah Silverman, Ellen Page and Sylvester Stallone call for Suu Kyi's release and the establishment of democracy in Myanmar, also known as Burma.

"A human rights crisis is happening right now in the Southeast Asian country of Burma," Ferrell says in the first of the series. "Every now and again a single person or event captures the imagination and inspiration of the world. This moment belongs to Burma and to Aung San Suu Kyi."

Myanmar has been ruled by military regimes for nearly all of the past 46 years. Suu Kyi's political party won a landslide victory in a 1990 election and she was slated to become the country's next leader, but the regime threw out the results and arrested her. Suu Kyi, who will turn 63 next month, is the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Most recently, the reclusive regime has come under harsh international criticism for refusing to accept foreign aid for victims of Cyclone Nargis, which killed at least 78,000 earlier this month and left hundreds of thousands more without adequate food, water or shelter.

The Web-based celebrity campaign, called "Burma: It Can't Wait," began May 1 but has been overshadowed by the cyclone, which struck Myanmar two days later. Organizers hope to raise Myanmar's profile in the same way that activists have put Chinese control of Tibet and the Darfur genocide on the map.

Another goal of the project is to sign up a million new members for the U.S. Campaign for Burma, a Washington-based organization that promotes democratic change in Myanmar.

The videos can be found at uscampaignforburma.org.

Some of the spots are sketches that try to draw attention to the troubled nation by injecting humor, such as one featuring Jennifer Aniston and a recalcitrant Woody Harrelson, who refuses to leave his trailer. "I'm not coming out until Burma is free," he shouts.

Others are serious, such as one directed by Anjelica Huston in which comedian Eddie Izzard praises the young people of Myanmar who led protests against the regime last year. "We must use our freedom to help them get theirs," he says.

Huston said in an interview that she took part in the project to highlight the injustices of the regime. "I am particularly drawn to the idea of this small, extraordinarily beautiful country that has been suppressed in this terrible way for so long and the fact that the leader of the democratic party has been shut up under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years," Huston said.

The campaign has attracted such celebrities as director Judd Apatow, Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona, actor Joseph Fiennes, singer Sheryl Crow, action star Steven Seagal, actress Felicity Huffman and producer Norman Lear.

One 90-second video features Iranian artist Davood, who is shown in time-elapsed photography painting a portrait of Suu Kyi. Only at the end does it become clear that she is wearing handcuffs.

In another, "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" star Eric Szmanda and alumna Jorja Fox play a card game called "Forced Labor," in which he holds the cards of a Burmese soldier and she is dealt the hand of a civilian, who suffers rape, torture and murder.

"I don't think I like this game," Fox says.

"No one does," Szmanda replies.

Szmanda, who visited refugees along the Thai border and briefly crossed into Myanmar last year, said he was stunned by the heart-wrenching accounts of civilians who escaped the regime.

"Something came over me while I was there. I didn't feel a sense of pity, I felt a sense of urgency," he said. "I had a chance to meet a lot of former political prisoners who are now living on the border of Thailand. It's unbelievable what some of them had to do endure for nine or 10 years."

Actress Rosanna Arquette, who appears in a spot condemning the destruction of 3,200 villages by the regime, said she was moved to participate in the project because of the plight of Suu Kyi.

"She has done so much and she is still a prisoner," Arquette said in an interview. "And the world doesn't really know. There are no Americans there to help. It's really like a creepy secret."

Jack Healey, the former head of Amnesty International who helped raise that group's profile through celebrity concerts, had a key role in organizing the Burma project. He said one of his goals is to give Suu Kyi the kind of profile that Nelson Mandela had while he was imprisoned in South Africa.

"We want her to be the Mandela of her time," he said. "Maybe by the end we will all know who she is."

Fanista, a new "social commerce" shopping website, underwrote and produced many of the spots and offers customers a 10% rebate that they can donate to the U.S. Campaign for Burma.

In his spot, Stallone talks about his fourth "Rambo" movie, which was released earlier this year and casts the Myanmar dictatorship as the villain. The film depicts "atrocity de-mining," in which civilians are forced to walk ahead of the army at gunpoint to uncover hidden land mines. The regime banned the movie.

"While it is flattering to be part of a movie that is giving the Burmese people hope and it is cool to say 'I'm banned in Burma,' these people need real hope," Stallone says in the 80-second spot. "Let's do something we can be proud about."

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ASEAN Warns Burma to Boost Confidence Ahead of Donors Meeting

By Ron Corben
Bangkok, Thailand
22 May 2008
The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) says that claims by Burma's

government that rescue efforts from cyclone Nargis were over was undermining international confidence with the total death toll still unknown. As Ron Corben reports from Bangkok the ASEAN chief's comments came as the United Nations secretary general met with Burma's Prime Minister in efforts to speed up relief efforts and ahead of a donors meeting on Sunday.Association of South East Asian Nations Secretary-General, Surin Pitsuwan, speaking to reporters Thursday, said claims by Burma's military that relief efforts were over and for reconstruction to go ahead was undermining international confidence.

Mr. Surin said international agencies were still saying the full extent of the disaster has yet to be "fully verified."

"This discrepancy is a confidence gap that has to be verified, that has to be reconciled because that is the gap that is going to create confidence or lack of confidence for the claim that the rescue and relief phase is over," he said. "The shared concern is we don't know the extent of the damage, we don't know the numbers of the dead, the numbers of the missing or the numbers of the displaced."
Burmese authorities say the cyclone that hit May 2 and May 3 killed an estimated 78,000 people, and that 56,000 others are still missing. Some 2.5 million people remain in need of critical aid and the United Nations says just 30 percent of those in need have received assistance.

ASEAN foreign ministers reached agreement this week with Burma for greater access for regional assistance. ASEAN and the U.N. formed the "coalition of the mercy" with the purpose of stepping up relief. Burma's military has been widely criticized for restricting access to international aid agencies to the worst affected regions.
On Thursday U.N. Secretary, General Ban Ki-moon, met with Burma's Prime Minister, Thein Sein, to press the military to open the country to greater access to international relief. Mr. Ban is due to meet with Burma's senior General Than Shwe Friday.

Mr. Ban's visit comes ahead of a donor's conference scheduled for Sunday. Burma says the total cost from the cyclone now stands at $11 billion.

Non-government aid organizations are calling on the international community to support the ASEAN initiative to assist Burma by way of the donor's meeting. Dr. Jermail Mahmood is president of Mercy Malaysia.

"ASEAN must know that it is not alone and it must know that it has the support from international aid agencies who have the experience behind them to play an active role in ensuring that the humanitarian response imperative comes first and beyond that the recovery and reconstruction as well," said Dr. Mahmood.

But human rights groups are concerned aid funds are accounted for and meet international standards amid fears of corruption. Debbie Stothardt, is spokeswomen for the rights group, the Alternative ASEAN Network. She says transparency and accountability will be foremost in donor's minds.

"What we need to see from the aid community is a very strong, united response not just a call for money but to actually insist that rules and criteria be adopted," she said.

Aid organizations say Burma is allowing more aid to be flown in planes carrying emergency supplies, including from the United States. But they say more relief is needed given the scale of the disaster.
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Ban Ki-moon to meet Burma leader

P.S: Please go to the original link if you would like to see a clip.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is to meet with Burma's military leader, Gen Than Shwe, after touring cyclone-hit areas of the country.

On a tour of the Irrawaddy Delta, Mr Ban flew over flooded rice fields and destroyed villages and visited a relief camp set up by the government.

Mr Ban said his mission was to urge the Burma's rulers to accept more aid.

About 78,000 people have died and another 56,000 are missing from Cyclone Nargis which struck on 2 May.

'Show camp'

"I am so sorry, but don't lose your hope," Mr Ban told a woman at the Kyonday relief camp in the Irrawaddy Delta.

A UN official privately called it a "show camp", says the BBC's Laura Trevelyan, in Burma with the secretary general.

"The United Nations is here to help you. The whole world is trying to save Myanmar [Burma]," Mr Ban said, looking into her blue tent.

Mr Ban told reporters he was "very upset" by the devastation he had seen.


"Many human lives have been lost, houses are destroyed, roads and streets are washed away, and all rice paddies flooded with water. I'm very much concerned. These farmers may lose their planting season," he said.

But in a meeting earlier with Burma's Prime Minister Thein Sein, Mr Ban was told that the relief phase of the aid operation was over and that the government was now focusing on reconstruction, a UN official said.

Mr Ban told the prime minister that the disaster was beyond Burma's ability to handle on its own and that foreign aid experts should be rushed javascript:void(0)
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"The United Nations and all the international community stand ready to help to overcome the tragedy," Mr Ban is quoted as saying.
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