UN's Ban says will meet Myanmar junta leader
YANGON (AFP) — UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday he would meet Myanmar's reclusive junta leader during a high-profile trip to convince the country to accept a full-scale cyclone relief operation.
Ban landed in neighbouring Thailand on the eve of a visit aimed at getting the regime of Senior General Than Shwe to welcome more outside help for two million needy survivors of Cyclone Nargis.
There has been an international uproar over the limits on the aid operation imposed by Myanmar since the storm, which has left at least 133,000 people dead or missing in the country's worst natural disaster ever.
Ban had failed to get Than Shwe to take his calls in the wake of the May 2-3 storm, but said he now expected to meet him during the three-day trip -- and stressed that the issue of aid for Myanmar should not be politicised.
"Our focus is on saving lives," he said. "This is a critical moment for Myanmar."
Ban reiterated a UN warning that only 25 percent of those in need had been reached by international aid. "I hope we will be able to scale up these relief efforts," he said.
Before leaving New York on Tuesday, Ban said the junta had agreed to let nine UN helicopters work in remote regions hit hard by the storm.
But the United Nations and aid groups say the relief operation has been far short of what is required. Many survivors are still without enough food, water, shelter or medical care nearly three weeks after the storm hit.
Detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party said relief work in the hardest-hit areas had not "been performed competently" and called on the UN to take a greater role in delivering aid.
"The secretary general is also requested to try his utmost to assist the people of Burma, who are in great trouble," the National League for Democracy said in a statement.
The secretive country has welcomed thousands of tonnes of donations but has rejected most foreign aid workers, including specialists in disaster zones needed to run a major relief operation.
Ban said he wanted a logistics hub inside Myanmar, which has reportedly agreed to a joint mechanism between the United Nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to coordinate the emergency effort.
The secretary general of the 10-nation bloc, Surin Pitsuwan, met Wednesday in Myanmar with Prime Minister Thein Sein to explain how the new aid mechanism would work, ASEAN said.
The junta's English-language mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar paper, said earlier that the regime would not take aid coming from US military ships and helicopters because of unspecified "strings attached."
The United States, one of the regime's most vocal critics, has repeatedly said its aid is unconditional, and Ban will try to get the generals to open up to more help to prevent further lives being lost.
In its latest internal report on the situation, the United Nations said "transport and access constraints" had kept food aid from reaching some villages.
Cyclone Nargis wiped out vast swathes of the country's Irrawaddy Delta, leaving vital rice paddies in ruins and washing away entire villages.
Despite the scope of the destruction, the World Bank said Tuesday it could not provide any financial assistance to Myanmar because the country was 10 years behind in its debts.
Myanmar, once a prosperous British colony called Burma that was one of the world's major exporters of rice, has been run by the iron hand of the military since 1962.
The country has earned the scorn of the international community due to a snail's pace "road map" to restore democracy that critics call a sham.
The government has held Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for most of the time since 1990, when her party won the country's last national elections, but was not allowed to take office.
The generals have often turned their back on the outside world -- and are going ahead Saturday with the second round of a referendum on a new constitution even though the country is still in the midst of tragedy.
Ban will not be on Myanmar soil during the vote. He will visit Thursday and Friday, and then return on Sunday for an international conference of donors in the main city, Yangon.
EU aid chief Louis Michel, on his return from Myanmar, told the European Parliament that the regime showed a "total distrust of the international community."
