UN's top disaster official arrives in Myanmar
YANGON (AFP) — The UN's top disaster official John Holmes arrived in Myanmar on Sunday on a three-day visit to convince the reluctant regime to open the doors to a massive relief effort after Cyclone Nargis.
He arrived just hours after the latest UN emergency report on the country -- where around two million survivors are lacking food and water more than two weeks after the storm hit -- said basic needs were still critical.
The international community has been turning up the pressure on the regime over its handling of the tragedy, which has left nearly 134,000 people dead or missing since tearing into the southern Irrawaddy Delta on May 2.
Holmes was carrying a letter to the head of the junta, Than Shwe, from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who will himself soon visit Myanmar to discuss the delivery of international aid.
Ban's spokesman told AFP that he was due to leave New York on Tuesday and arrive in Myanmar on Wednesday or Thursday.
The UN chief has made repeated calls to Than Shwe but failed to reach him since the tragedy.
State television said Than Shwe made his first visit to areas affected by the disaster on Sunday. It showed him touring camps of survivors on the outskirts of the main city Yangon, but not in the hard-hit delta area.
The secretive military regime has been letting more foreign experts into the country in recent days, but aid groups say it is not enough to ensure that victims get the food, water, shelter and medical care they need.
They say the government cannot possibly handle the tragedy alone, with hundreds of tonnes of supplies and high-tech equipment sitting in warehouses, bottle-necked by logistics and other problems.
"Here were all these supplies piled up, how come they were not distributing them?" the top US diplomat in Myanmar, Shari Villarosa, told AFP on Sunday after a state-guided visit from Yangon airport to the delta.
"What I saw did not change my impression that there are a lot of people who have not been reached," she said. "I was also struck by the lack of urgency."
The international community has repeatedly warned that time is running out to save lives of survivors, with outbreaks of diarrhoea and cholera already reported -- and many victims reporting little or no government aid.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner have both raised the spectre of crimes against humanity by the junta over its handling of the catastrophe.
Tutu said the regime had "effectively declared war on its own population."
Despite the government's insistence that the relief effort is going well, witnesses who managed to sneak through the security cordon around the Irrawaddy Delta said the situation remained dire.
"It was horrible beyond description," said a foreign businessman, one of about a dozen eyewitnesses interviewed by AFP who had returned from the zone in the past two days.
"Most of the devastated huts looked like they were empty at first glance. But there were actually survivors inside," he said.
"One hut with no roof was full of about 100 people, crouching in the rain. There was no food and no water. Each person had nothing more than the clothes on their bodies, shivering in the cold."
The junta has continued to insist it can handle most of the relief operation by itself, and state media are full of photos of smiling citizens receiving handouts from generals.
The junta's English-language mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper, on Sunday carried more than two dozen stories praising its own relief efforts.
"Rescue and relief works can be expedited effectively thanks to the measures the government has taken to materialise the relief undertakings as scheduled," it said.
Aid agencies are hoping that Holmes will have some sway on the regime, which keeps an iron grip on one of the poorest and most isolated nations on the planet.
There has been no confirmation that he will meet with Than Shwe, who also flew into Yangon on Sunday from Naypyidaw -- the remote purpose-built town where he abruptly moved the seat of government two years ago.
