ASEAN to take lead in Burma relief

[The Smoking Man]

UN chief tours still-flooded Myanmar delta

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 27 minutes ago

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon flew over Myanmar's flooded Irrawaddy delta on Thursday, where the ravages of a cyclone stretched as far as the eye could see: Villages were empty of life, flattened huts dissolved into vast areas of water and people perched on rooftops.

Nearly three weeks after the storm, life was grim even at a refugee camp showcased by Myanmar's junta during the carefully scripted tour.

"I'm very upset by what I've seen," Ban said, visibly shaken by the firsthand look at the devastation, even though the areas to which he was taken were far from those worst-hit by Cyclone Nargis.

Before his helicopter flyover, Ban had said he was bringing a "message of hope," to Myanmar's people following the May 2-3 cyclone, which claimed more than 78,000 lives, according to government figures, and left more than 56,000 missing.

Myanmar's military rulers have been eager to show they have the relief effort under control despite spurning the help of foreign disaster experts, and much of the tour was taken up by statistics-laden lectures to make that point.

The U.N. says up to 2.5 million cyclone survivors face hunger, homelessness and potential outbreaks of deadly diseases, especially in the low-lying areas of the Irrawaddy Delta close to the sea. It estimates that aid has reached only about 25 percent of victims.

The four-hour tour Thursday included two stops — one at Mawlamyinegyun, an aid distribution point stocked with bags of rice and cartons of bottled drinking water and the other at a makeshift camp where 500 people huddled in tents in the village of Kyondah, about 45 miles southwest of Yangon.

Still, the destruction in the region was relatively mild compared to Labutta and Bogalay to the south, where the Red Cross said rivers and ponds were full of corpses and many people have received no aid. Officials gave no explanation for why Ban was not taken to those areas, where most of the dead and missing were reported.

By contrast, Kyondah — which has electricity and clean water — is somewhat of a showcase and was selected for visits by senior junta members, foreign embassy officials and international aid organizations last week.

At the camp, the secretary-general was given a detailed explanation by Maj. Gen. Lun Thi of how Kyondah, formerly a cluster of seven villages with a population of 5,228, has expertly handled relief efforts. The village had 122 dead and missing, he said.

He displayed charts saying the camp had 300 bags of rice, 64 boxes of instant noodles, 1,500 eggs, 12,000 bottles of drinking water and 1,240 pieces of preserved meat. Also listed were napkins, steel bowls, blankets, T-shirts, tarps and men's and ladies' underwear.

While the general spoke, Ban sat in the front row of an elaborately constructed sitting room where bowls of fruit and soda were served. Ban ate and drank nothing.

Once the lecture was over, Ban strode into the camp, stopping at tents to look in on the homeless families, some with children as young as a day old.

"The whole world is trying to help Myanmar," he told one family in the camp, where inhabitants had cooking pots and blankets that appeared to be new stacked neatly in their tents. Some smiled at him, but said little.

An idea of the storm's destructive force was more obvious from the air.

The two helicopters carrying Ban's party flew over seemingly endless fields surrounded by flood waters, villages with destroyed houses, rivers swollen past their banks, people huddled on rooftops or in makeshift tents, or moving around in boats.

In some areas, the flooding stretched as far as the eye could see, with people living in damaged homes that looked completely cut off.

So far, no one at the U.N. has ventured an estimate of how long the delta is expected to remain submerged. But on Thursday, Ban said he expected the relief operations to be needed for at least six months.

The question of pumps and levees, and whether they could be used to make the flooding less extensive, is an issue U.N. officials say they might raise at a regional aid conference Sunday.

Much of the area is normally planted with rice, but the water level is far too high for that and the paddies are inundated with damaging salt water, U.N. officials said.

The monsoon, bringing seasonal rains, is part of the normal cycle, but doesn't usually cause flooding in the delta, they said.

Heavy rains have followed the cyclone, bringing more flooding and hardship to survivors, but Ban expressed hope the rain might also cleanse the rice paddies of the salt water.

"I praise the will, resilience and the courage of the people of Myanmar. I bring a message of hope for the people of Myanmar," he said.

U.N. officials traveling with Ban said they were discussing with Chinese authorities whether Ban could tour the earthquake zone in Sichuan after leaving Myanmar. The officials requested anonymity, citing protocol.

Such a trip would give Ban a chance to compare the two countries' responses and urge China — Myanmar's biggest ally — to put its weight behind opening the flow of aid workers.

Ban tried to keep political issues off his plate.

Activists called on the U.N. chief to meet with detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and seek her release. The Nobel Peace prize laureate has been confined to her Yangon villa for most of the last 18 years and her current period of detention is due to expire Monday. But a meeting with Suu Kyi was not on Ban's official itinerary.

In a meeting earlier Thursday with Prime Minister Lt. Gen. Thein Sein, Ban stressed international aid experts should be rushed in because the crisis is too much for Myanmar to handle alone, according to a U.N. official at the talks.

"The United Nations and all the international community stand ready to help to overcome the tragedy," Ban said.

Thein Sein said the relief phase of the government's operation was ending and that the focus had shifted to reconstruction, according to the U.N. official at the talks who requested anonymity for reasons of protocol.

U.N. official Dan Baker said junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe would meet with Ban on Friday at Naypyitaw. Ban earlier said Than Shwe had refused to take his telephone calls and did not respond to two letters.

Yangon citizens did not seem optimistic that Ban's visit would make a difference.

"Don't just talk, you must take action," said Eain Daw Bar Tha, abbot of a Buddhist monastery on Yangon's outskirts. "The U.N. must directly help the people with helicopters to bring food, clothes and clean water to the really damaged places."

[Polly]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7416143.stm

[The Smoking Man]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7416143.stm

Yes Polly, that is what we call 'the rest of the western world reading the riot act to a bunch of jumped up little asian fuckers who think their organization skills are a match for natural disasters'.

Once it is pointed out that there are a fleet of battle ships as well as the aid ships ready to enter and haul them off to the Haigue to face the death penalty, they usually come around to realize that a bunch of third world nations just can't quite cut it in the real world of disaster relief.

[The Smoking Man]

This was the news released at the same time as the acceptance of aid:

France may push for UN resolution on Myanmar aid

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 57 minutes ago

France will push for a United Nations resolution authorizing the delivery of aid to Myanmar's cyclone survivors "by all means necessary" if pressure from the U.N. chief and neighboring countries doesn't work, France's U.N. ambassador said Thursday.

Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert's comments at the U.N. come after French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said earlier this week that the Security Council can and should force Myanmar to allow delivery of international aid to cyclone victims.

Ripert said France will wait to hear from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes, who are visiting Myanmar, and from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which is in charge of coordinating international aid, "to see if there is some concrete improvement on the access to the victims."

"If not, we will have to go back to the Security Council," he said.

"We should pass a resolution allowing to go directly to the population ... to ask all the countries in the world and all the members states in a position to do so to deliver aid by all means necessary — the humanitarian aid — in cooperation with the Burmese authorities," Ripert told a group of reporters.

In an editorial in the French daily newspaper Le Monde on Monday, Kouchner said if the Security Council doesn't force Myanmar to accept the delivery of international aid, the council would be guilty of "cowardice."

Kouchner did not detail how the U.N. could require Myanmar to allow passage of aid, or elaborate on discussions earlier this month of possible air drops of relief supplies. But he said the council has intervened in the past to force the passage of humanitarian aid in Kurdistan in Iraq, Bosnia and Rwanda — and could do it again with Myanmar.

Ban was scheduled to meet Friday with Myanmar's junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, to press him to fully open up to international aid for 2.5 million Cyclone Nargis survivors. On Thursday, the U.N. chief witnessed some of the devastation caused by the May 2-3 cyclone during a carefully choreographed tour to the hard-hit Irrawaddy delta.

[The Smoking Man]

Junta Offers Showcase Camps, but Most Burmese Lack Aid
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

HLINETHAYA RELIEF CAMP, Myanmar — The 68 blue tents are lined up in a row, with a brand-new water purifier and boxes of relief supplies, stacked neatly but as yet undelivered and not even opened. “If you don’t keep clean, you’ll be expelled from here,” a camp manager barked at families in some tents.

The moment, at what has been billed as a model camp for survivors of Cyclone Nargis, captured a common complaint among refugees and aid volunteers: that the military junta that rules Myanmar cares more about the appearance of providing aid than actually providing it.

As a result of heavy international pressure, the junta has embarked on a campaign to show itself as responsive and open to aid as China has been in the wake of the earthquake that killed tens of thousands in Sichuan Province. On Thursday, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, arrived in Myanmar, as United Nations officials said that, nearly three weeks after the cyclone that left 134,000 dead or missing, they were finally seeing some small improvement.

The first 10 helicopters loaded with supplies from the World Food Program arrived Thursday. But of the 2.4 million survivors, United Nations officials say, only 500,000 have received any aid to date.

Mr. Ban received guided tours of apparently well-run government camps like this one for survivors, presenting one vision of the junta’s response to its people and the outside world. But interviews with survivors and Burmese breaking rules to help them suggest a different story: of a government that seems to have assisted little and, at times, with startling callousness, has even expelled homeless refugees from shelters that the junta needs for other purposes.

This relief camp in the western outskirts of Yangon, the country’s main city, made headlines in Myanmar’s state-run press when the junta’s leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, showed up there on Sunday to inspect the government relief effort.

A few days after the general’s inspection, the camp’s tidy blue tents were still set up but bottles of cooking oil inside many of them remained in their boxes. Pots and pans still bore their brand-name stickers.

The camp’s sole “medical” tent, identified by a Red Cross flag, held neither patients nor medicine. Its desk was staffed by two teenagers in uniform. Police officers armed with rifles guarded the entrance, where a new water purification tank donated by a local company was on prominent display.

Just a short ride down a potholed road, a striking divide is evident, one between the model relief camp and the continuing plight of many victims.

In the village of Ar Pyin Padan, a few minutes’ walk from here and just an hour’s drive from the center of Yangon, 40 families who lost nearly everything they owned crowded a rundown two-story school building. They had pushed desks together to serve as makeshift beds.

Here, deliveries of relief supplies are so infrequent that the refugees say they draw lots to get a small share whenever a donation comes in. For drinking water, one said, the township authorities “threw some medicine” into a nearby pond and told the villagers to drink from it.

Now the authorities are allowing no more refugees into the school. Instead they are trying to evict those who are already there so that the building can be used as a balloting station on Saturday. Despite the devastation and misery left by the cyclone, the junta is pressing ahead with voting in the two hardest-hit administrative divisions, Yangon and the Irrawaddy Delta, to complete a referendum on a new Constitution intended to perpetuate military rule. The Constitution was already overwhelmingly approved in other parts of the country.

“They want us to move out,” said one man in the school shelter. “But we have nowhere to go. Maybe if I had four or five sticks of bamboo, I could rebuild my house and start over but they don’t even give us that. So please donate to us. We need urgent help.”

He called the blue tents a short distance away beyond the rice paddies a “V.I.P. camp” — hastily constructed and occupied by villagers tutored to receive visiting junta generals or envoys from the United Nations.

In the past week, the state-run news media have given lavish coverage to General Than Shwe and other generals visiting areas devastated by the storm. At the same time, some critics say the junta has been obstructing attempts by Burmese to deliver assistance to isolated villages.

“The government is not really interested in helping people,” said U Thura, a dissident comedian who has been jailed four times in the past two decades for his outspokenness. “What they want is to show to the rest of the country and the world that they have saved the people and now it’s time to go back to business as usual.”

Mr. Thura and other volunteers have been lugging relief goods into remote villages in the Irrawaddy Delta over the past two weeks.

“Only a very small percentage of the victims get help at government-run camps,” he said in an interview. “Those fortunate enough to live near roads and rivers also get help. But people in remote villages that are hard to reach don’t get anything. To make it worse, the people in the Irrawaddy Delta have traditionally been antigovernment, so the junta doesn’t like them.”

“Even if they die,” he said, “the generals won’t feel sorry for them.”

For these outlying villagers in the delta, occasional visits by people like Mr. Thura have been virtually the only help they could get. But even people like the ones much closer to Yangon, like Ar Pyin Padan, do not appear to be faring much better.

“If they don’t get help soon, so many of them will die,” said a 36-year-old Yangon resident who has made four private aid runs into villages near Hpayapon, a delta town. “It’s hot when the sun shines and cold when it rains. When you see the villages, you just wonder how these people sleep at night in the rain. They have no shelter to speak of.”

“They are still so stunned by what had happened to them that they show no emotion,” he said. “They don’t even thank us when we give them food. They just accept the help with no expression in their faces.”

He said that during their aid runs he and his friends saw people with pneumonia, cholera and diarrhea. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the private aid deliveries that his group conducts are prohibited.

Mr. Thura and other aid runners said they were hampered by reinforced military checkpoints as well as by roads washed away and streams clogged with storm debris. Those who reach towns with aid are told that such goods must be distributed through the authorities. Many groups like Mr. Thura’s break away and head deeper into the delta on their own.

“We usually drive from Yangon in five hours, switch to a boat and travel four more hours and then we carry whatever we can — rice, noodles, energy drinks, medicine, gaslights — on our backs and walk,” he said. “You really need helicopters and boats to help these people.”

One of his recent trips took him to a village called Mangay. The village, whose name means “gaze at” in Burmese, was a sorry sight, he said. Once a prosperous community of 1,000 families who supplied dried fish throughout Myanmar, Mangay was virtually wiped out: 700 families were left homeless and 500 people were reportedly dead or missing.

Mr. Thura said more than 400 people were making donations for his aid runs as a way of helping the victims directly. Still, his five teams of renegade aid runners, who often use Buddhist monks as scouts, could only manage to deliver 6.5 million kyats, about $6,500, of relief a day into 32 villages.

The aid runners are coming under increasing pressure from the government.

Twenty of Mr. Thura’s team members have received calls from the police warning that they will be punished if they continue their work. On Sunday, he said, his photographer, U Kyaw Swar Aung, was arrested and has not been heard from since. He had been traveling around the delta making videos of dead bodies, crying children and villagers who went insane after the storm and distributing them as DVDs.

Meanwhile, Mr. Thura said the government seemed less focused on aid than on making sure there were no more scenes like those to film. In one place, he said he saw a pile of floating bodies clogging the narrow mouth of a stream after they were dumped into the water by soldiers on a cleanup operation.

“Then the soldiers used dynamite to blow up the bodies into shreds,” he said.

[The Smoking Man]

So there you have it.

Fucked over again.

They can't use military helicopters or military boats to move the goods.

So now they have the delay of waiting for civilian boats to show up.

Start listening to the French in the UN ... Or Driveby's ex-foreign minister.

UN chief says Myanmar will take relief aid by ship

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer
46 minutes ago

YANGON, Myanmar - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says Myanmar will allow delivery of aid to its cyclone victims by civilian ships and boats.

The wording of Ban's announcement suggests that U.S., British and French warships waiting off Myanmar's coast with relief supplies would not be allowed to dock. It left open the possibility that other boats could ferry supplies from those ships.

Ban told reporters that junta chief Senior Gen. Than Shwe agreed at a meeting Friday morning that "international aid could be delivered to Myanmar via civilian ships and small boats."

Ban said earlier that the junta agreed to allow "all aid workers" into the country to help survivors. He is on a mission to open Myanmar to international disaster assistance.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, on a mission to open Myanmar to international disaster assistance, said the ruling junta agreed Friday to allow "all aid workers" into the country to help survivors.

Ban's comments came after a crucial two-hour meeting Friday with the junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the country's most powerful figure. Myanmar's junta has until now refused to allow an influx of foreign aid and experts to reach survivors of Cyclone Nargis, which struck three weeks ago and killed at least 78,000 people and left 56,000 missing.

The United Nations chief did not say whether Than Shwe had acceded to the most urgent request by international aid agencies — to allow their foreign experts into the hardest-hit region, the Irrawaddy delta.

However, when asked if he thought the agreement was a breakthrough, Ban told reporters: "I think so." One foreign aid official called it a "significant step forward."

A senior U.N. official present at the meeting said Than Shwe also gave the green light for foreigners to work in the hardest-hit region, the Irrawaddy delta, which has been virtually off-limits to them.

Ban "saw no reason why that should not happen, as long as they are genuine humanitarian workers and it was clear as to what they were going to be doing," said the official, who requested anonymity for reasons of protocol.

The official said government authorities had earlier not been able to give this assurance of access because they needed a "green light from the top."

Myanmar's military government has until now refused to allow an unimpeded influx of foreign aid and experts to reach survivors of the May 2-3 Cyclone Nargis. While granting an increasing number of visas to foreign staffers, the regime barred all but a handful of them from the delta.

Myanmar's military regime has been eager to show it has the relief effort under control despite spurning the help of foreign disaster experts and has trotted out officials to give statistics-laden lectures to make the point.

Some 2.5 million survivors are at risk from disease, starvation and exposure to monsoon rains.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warned Friday that hundreds of thousands of people in remote areas of the delta have insufficient food, and said prices for rice, cooking oil and other basics had doubled throughout the country.

Only a "very narrow window of opportunity" remains to provide seeds and other material to farmers before the rice planting season upon which millions depend begins in a few weeks, the agency said. It said that half the cattle and buffaloes in 10 townships surveyed had perished during the storms.

"I had a very good meeting with Senior General Than Shwe and particularly on the aid workers. He has agreed to allow all the aid workers, regardless of nationality" into the country, Ban said.

Although the regime has been granting an increasing number of visas for foreign aid workers to enter the country, all but a handful have been confined to Yangon, the country's largest city.

"I urged him that it would be crucially important for him to allow aid workers as swiftly as possible and all these aid relief items also be delivered to the needy people as soon as possible," Ban said.

Than Shwe also agreed to make Yangon the logistics hub of the aid operation, which Ban called "an important development," Ban said.

"This is a significant step forward, and could be a turning point in the aid response," said Brian Agland, who heads the U.S.-based aid group CARE in Myanmar. "We welcome the agreement that has been reached between the U.N. secretary-general and government authorities in Myanmar that will facilitate the immediate entry of emergency response experts."

Ban arrived at the remote capital of Naypyitaw earlier Friday after a flight from Yangon, 250 miles to the south. He witnessed some of the cyclone's devastation during a carefully choreographed tour Thursday.

It was not known whether Ban discussed the fate of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose latest period of detention expires Monday. A string of U.N. envoys have in the past failed to spring the democracy icon from house arrest, confronting a junta that has proved virtually impervious to outside pressure.

The 76-year-old Than Shwe — reclusive, superstitious and known as "the bulldog" for his stubbornness — had refused to answer Ban's calls from New York or answer two letters sent to him by the secretary-general.

As Ban's visit proceeded, the regime appeared to ease some of its restrictions on foreigners.

France-based Doctors Without Borders said it now had some foreign staffers working in four areas of the hard-hit Irrawaddy delta, which had previously been virtually off limits to non-Myanmar relief workers.

A second French cargo plane loaded with 40 tons of relief supplies was due to land Friday in Yangon, while Canada said it would lend its biggest military aircraft, a C-17 cargo lifter, to deliver U.N. World Food Program helicopters to Myanmar.

The regime had earlier allowed the U.N. agency to bring in 10 helicopters to fly emergency aid to stranded victims.

Ban's firsthand look at the devastation wrought by the storm left the secretary-general shaken Thursday, even though the areas to which he was taken were far from the worst-hit.

"I'm very upset by what I've seen," Ban told reporters after a walk through a makeshift relief camp where 500 people huddled in blue tents at Kyondah village in Dedaye township, about 45 miles southwest of Yangon, Myanmar's largest city.

[The Smoking Man]

UN's Ban gets Myanmar to accept foreign aid

by Hla Hla Htay 56 minutes ago

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Friday the eyes of the world were now on Myanmar after pushing the secretive military regime to accept a major relief effort for survivors of the cyclone disaster.

After more than two hours of talks with junta leader Than Shwe, Ban said he had convinced him to agree to accept foreign disaster experts -- three weeks after the storm left at least 133,000 people dead or missing.

Ban said he was encouraged by his talks with the military regime's top general -- who had refused to take his calls after the storm hit -- but said Myanmar now had to back up its pledges with concrete progress on the ground.

"The world is watching," he told a news conference in the main city Yangon. "Implementation will be the key."

He said 2.4 million survivors were in need of emergency aid, which has been held up by Myanmar's refusal to let foreign disaster experts into the country as well as logistical bottle-necks in the complicated aid operation.

Cyclone Nargis ripped through the country's southern Irrawaddy Delta on May 2-3, wiping out entire villages and laying waste to critical rice-growing areas just weeks before the next planting season begins.

"Flying over the Irrawaddy delta yesterday (Thursday), I saw the saddest things... We work hard in our lives for ourselves and our families -- and then in a moment, it is gone," Ban said.

"I am humbled -- humbled by the scale of this natural disaster."

Deeply suspicious of the outside world's motives, Than Shwe and the junta have been wary of letting in large numbers of outsiders and have rejected aid from French and US naval ships in nearby waters that are loaded with supplies.

But Ban said he had told Than Shwe that "more needs to be done" to get a full-scale relief operation up to speed, with aid groups warning that more people will die unless they get assistance immediately.

"I specifically asked the government to liberalise visa policies and to grant unhindered access to foreign aid experts and also journalists so they can operate freely and effectively to help Myanmar," Ban said.

"He has taken quite a flexible position on an issue that until now has been an obstacle to organising coordinated and fully effective international aid and assistance operations," the UN chief said.

"I hope all these agreements can produce results quickly."

He met reporters here after a trip to Than Shwe's remote bunker capital of Naypyidaw , where the general stayed out of public view for more than two weeks after the cyclone.

There was no immediate confirmation of the deal from Myanmar, one of the poorest and most isolated countries on the planet.

While welcoming thousands of tonnes of donated supplies, the regime has been blocking visas for foreign experts and has insisted reports of survivors not getting enough aid were the work of "traitors".

The agreement came on day two of Ban's landmark visit -- the first by a UN secretary general here in more than four decades.

Aid groups cautiously welcomed the news but stressed that the handful of foreign aid workers already in the country had largely been limited to Yangon and kept away from the devastated delta.

"The important issue is whether we can leave Yangon or not," Paul Risley, spokesman for the UN's World Food Programme, said in neighbouring Thailand.

Ban arrived back in Thailand late Friday, ahead of a trip to China's earthquake zone on Saturday.

He will return to Myanmar on Sunday for an international conference of donor nations contributing to the Myanmar relief effort.

The break means he will not be on Myanmar soil when the regime holds the next round of voting in a referendum on a new constitution -- a vote criticised for being held with the nation still in the midst of the cyclone catastrophe.

The vote to approve a new constitution is the first in Myanmar since a general election in 1990, when opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party won in a landslide but she was placed under house arrest.

The first round was held one week after the storm hit. The regime said 92 percent of the people voted in favour of the charter, which would ban Aung San Suu Kyi from ever holding office.

[The Smoking Man]

Four US ships to leave Myanmar coast after snub

2 hours, 18 minutes ago

Four US Navy ships which had been stationed off cyclone-hit Myanmar with relief supplies and aircraft will return to normal duties after the junta rejected their help, US officials said Wednesday.

The USS Essex group has been idling off the coast of the country once known as Burma since May 13, but the regime -- notoriously mistrustful of the West -- repeatedly refused any relief supplies from foreign militaries.

"Over the past three weeks we have made at least 15 attempts to convince the Burmese government to allow our ships, helicopters and landing craft to provide additional disaster relief for the people of Burma," Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of US Pacific Command, said in a statement.

"But they have refused us each and every time. It is time for the USS Essex group to move on to its next mission."

Several aircraft with heavy-lifting capabilities will be left in Thailand in case they are needed by aid agencies to help with the relief effort, he added in the statement issued by the US embassy in Bangkok.

The ships were carrying aid supplies including 15,000 water containers and purifying kits, as well as 14 helicopters and 1,000 Marines.

The four Navy vessels will leave on Thursday, but Keating said they could return if the Myanmar junta had a change of heart.

"I am both saddened and frustrated to know that we have been in a position to help ease the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people and help mitigate further loss of life, but have been unable to do so because of the unrelenting position of the Burma military junta," Keating said.

Myanmar's ruling generals angered the international community by severely restricting foreign relief supplies after Cyclone Nargis hit one month ago, leaving 133,000 people dead or missing and 2.4 million people in need of food, shelter and medicine.

After a UN-led diplomatic effort, the junta agreed May 23 to allow foreign aid workers access to the delta, but progress has been slow, with a lack of transportation and lifting equipment further hampering operations.

Last week, French navy ship the Mistral handed over its payload of aid to the United Nations in Thailand after the junta refused to let the vessel into the country.

[The Smoking Man]

Way to go, Polly!!!

You won one!!!

Hurrah!!!

[The Smoking Man]

We'd like to thank you for the lame attempt to run something for the first time but ...

Don't call us...

Aid chief says UN had to work with Myanmar junta
By Patrick Worsnip Reuters - Monday, June 9 08:02 pm

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.N. humanitarian chief defended on Monday the policy of working with Myanmar's military government after last month's cyclone, saying trying to deliver aid by force would not have helped the victims.

The official, John Holmes, said he believed the cooperation set up with the reclusive junta could ultimately assist international efforts to bring democracy to the Asian country.

Cyclone Nargis, which killed at least 134,000 people after striking in the first days of May, sparked widespread condemnation of the ruling generals for initially blocking international aid workers from entering the country.

France at one point suggested invoking a "responsibility to protect," enshrined in a 2005 U.N. resolution, to deliver aid without waiting for the approval of Myanmar's authorities.

But Holmes, who heads the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said he did not believe the Security Council could have forced the junta to be more cooperative or that military operations like airdrops could have worked.

"I've never seen a realistic alternative to the approach we've pursued spelled out by anybody," he told a meeting of the Asia Society in New York.

"Nor have I met anyone engaged in the operation on the ground who thought that there was an alternative which could actually have helped those most in need."

He said U.N. sanctions would not have been agreed by the Security Council, and even if they had been, they would not have benefited the cyclone victims in the short term.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner eventually conceded that the responsibility to protect applied to armed conflicts, not natural disasters. But he said countries on the Security Council that did not agree to pressure Myanmar into opening its doors to foreign aid were guilty of "cowardice."

LESS COOPERATIVE

Holmes said he did not think the responsibility to protect could never be applied to natural disasters, but "it would have to be absolutely the last, last, last resort."

Singapore's U.N. ambassador, Vanu Gopala Menon, told the meeting that threats of Security Council action had made the Myanmar generals initially less ready to cooperate.

"They are suspicious of humanitarian aid serving as a camouflage for regime change, a perception that is not entirely unreasonable when some countries have talked about invoking responsibility to protect and mounting relief operations without host government permission," he said.

During a visit to Myanmar, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon secured a promise on May 23 from senior general Than Shwe to let in foreign aid workers. U.N. officials say the junta has broadly honoured that promise so far.

Holmes suggested the relationship established between the international community and Myanmar could "have a significance beyond the immediate humanitarian operation, if both sides wanted it to ... It certainly shouldn't be ruled out."

Everyone knew that once the cyclone crisis was over, attempts to tackle Myanmar's political situation would be back on the agenda, he said.

Since the generals cracked down last September on pro-democracy demonstrators, U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari has been trying to promote dialogue between them and opposition figures including Nobel Peace Prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

Gambari hopes to visit Myanmar again soon, but there have been few signs of political concessions so far from the junta, which shortly after Ban's visit extended Suu Kyi's detention.

[The Smoking Man]

Well, now that the Asean is on top, they just have to pony up 1 billion dollars.

Not hard to see why this might be an impossibility considering Burma criticised the rest of the world, denied there was a problem and said the people could survive by eating frogs.

 

Yeah ... and the rest of the world WILL mourn this tragedy in that they will NOT give aid if it looks like it will be used by the Fascist Regime to extend their power.

Frogs anyone ... I'll take a drumstick.

Burma aid effort 'requires $1bn'

Relief and reconstruction work in Burma after Cyclone Nargis will cost at least $1bn (£500m), according to the UN and the regional body Asean.

The figure is in a report released at Asean's annual meeting in Singapore.

It is the first comprehensive assessment of the damage caused by the cyclone on 3-4 May, which is believed to have killed 130,000 people.

Burma's ruling generals were criticised in the wake of the cyclone for being slow to accept international aid.

Asean has already played a key part in helping to facilitate exchanges between Burma's ruling junta and international donors.

Enormous task

Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan told a news conference that the three parties involved in the report - the UN, Asean and the Burmese government - needed at least $1bn to deal with "a tragedy of immense proportions".

The estimated figure covers the most urgent needs such as food, agriculture and housing for the next three years.

"The task ahead is clearly enormous and will take a lot of time, a lot of effort," Mr Surin said.

   
READ THE ASEAN REPORT

"While significant progress has been made to date, we are still in the relief phase for this aid operation," added the UN humanitarian chief John Holmes.

The report outlines the scale of the cyclone - Burma's worst ever disaster - and estimates that it destroyed 450,000 homes, damaged 350,000 others, flooded 600,000 hectares of agricultural land and destroyed 60% of farming implements.

About 75% of hospitals and clinics in the area were destroyed or badly damaged.

'Deep disappointment'

Burma's military rulers are under the spotlight as delegates convene at the Asean meeting.

On Sunday, delegates issued a rare statement criticising the isolated nation, urging it to release political prisoners.

They expressed "deep disappointment" over the junta's one-year extension of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's detention.

In the past, the bloc has been accused of being too reluctant to speak out about the internal affairs of its member states.

The other issue on the agenda at the Asean meeting on Monday was the escalating tension between two other member states - Thailand and Cambodia - over ownership of the area around the ancient temples of Preah Vihear.

"The situation has escalated dangerously, with troops from both sides faced off on disputed territory near the Preah Vihear temple," Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told delegates in his opening speech.

He added that he had received assurances from both countries that they would exercise "utmost restraint" and abide by international laws to resolve the issue amicably.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7517655.stm

Published: 2008/07/21 13:35:15 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

[The Smoking Man]

 Rice hits out at Burma 'mockery'
By Jonathan Head
BBC News, Singapore

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has attacked the Burmese military's plan for a gradual restoration of democratic government.

Ms Rice, who is attending the annual summit of South East Asian countries in Singapore, described the plan as a "mockery which is going nowhere".

She praised Asean for helping persuade Burma's rulers to accept international help after Cyclone Nargis in May.

But she said mediation should not have been necessary after such a disaster.

'Real reform'

The appearance of Condoleezza Rice at this summit, after being absent in recent years, is being seen as a welcome sign of American re-engagement with South East Asia, but the Burmese delegation might wish she had stayed away.

After a meeting with the 10 South East Asian foreign ministers, and other regional powers, the US secretary of state accused Burma - also known as Myanmar - of being badly out of step with the rest of the region.

She gave credit to Asean (the Association of South East Asian Nations) for its role in opening up Burma to international aid after the cyclone.

She expressed hope that this precedent could now be expanded to persuading Burma's generals to embrace real political reform, rather then their tightly controlled roadmap to democracy, which she described as a kind of mockery.

US condemnation of Burma is nothing new, but open criticism from its Asian neighbours is - and there has been a lot more of it this year, albeit far more nuanced then what Ms Rice has been saying.

Asean is making much of its first charter, which it hopes will turn the association into a more effective regional bloc.

But the charter is supposed to enshrine human rights as a core value.

Watching the Burmese foreign minister sign it with a completely straight face, while his government continues to jail and harass its opponents, has been discomfiting for some Asean members.

Although others, like Vietnam and Laos which are scarcely less repressive, may be quietly glad that all the attention is focused on Burma.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7523072.stm

Published: 2008/07/24 10:10:54 GMT

© BBC MMVIII