A top UN envoy has arrived in Burma to attempt to convince the country's military government to accept more international aid for the millions harmed by Cyclone Nargis.
John Holmes, the UN under-secretary for humanitarian affairs, met with Deputy Foreign Minister Kyaw Thu at the start of a three-day trip to the region.
Holmes is expected to visit the Irrawaddy delta, the area most affected by the May 2-3 cyclone. He is to also meet with other senior government officials.
UN spokesperson Michele Montas said Holmes was dispatched to Burma after the country's leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe refused to take phone calls from UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon or respond to two letters.
It appears there may be some relenting by Burma, as a British official said Sunday the country may allow Western ships to deliver aid.
Lord Malloch-Brown of the British Foreign Office for Asia made the comment and said there may be dramatic steps by Burmese officials to open up the country for aid.
He told the BBC that negotiations will be held in the next few days but that an agreement is still far off.
More warnings
An international aid group warns that thousands of Burmese children affected by the cyclone will starve to death within two to three weeks if they don't get help.
"We are getting aid in. Our viewpoint is that we're not getting (it in) quickly enough," Amanada Weisbaum, head of response emergencies for Save the Children in London, told Â鶹´«Ã½net on Sunday.
"We believe that approximately 30,000 children are at risk of being acutely malnourished," she said.
That is the most serious level of hunger, and means a person is at risk of death, Jasmine Whitbread, a Save the Children official, told The Associated Press.
A UN situation report issued Saturday said aid has reached 500,000 people since the cyclone struck on May 2-3, but an estimated 2.5 million were affected by the cyclone.
The official death toll is 78,000, with 56,000 more missing. But aid groups say the death toll alone is closer to 128,000, with that number certain to climb if disaster efforts aren't stepped up.
State-run radio in Burma said the government has spent US$2 million on relief so far and has received millions of dollars worth of relief from local and foreign donors.
The government is delivering aid promptly and efficiently, it claimed.
In Twante, a town near Rangoon, one doctor told AP: "The farther you go, the worse the situation.
"Near (Rangoon), people are getting a lot of help and it's still bad. In the remote (Irrawaddy) delta villages, we don't even want to imagine," she said.
The doctor declined to give her name, fearing government reprisals.
Weisbam said her group has been given some access, but it's been restricted.
On Saturday, the government took a group of diplomats on a tour, but many weren't impressed.
'It was a show," Shari Villarosa, the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar, told The Associated Press by telephone after returning to Rangoon. "That's what they wanted us to see."
While a French warship with supplies sat off Burma's coast, the military government welcomed medical teams from Thailand and India.
A Canadian military aircraft landed in Bangkok on Saturday, carrying a cargo of 2,000 emergency shelter kits. The Red Cross will transport the kits to Burma and distribute them. A Red Cross official in Ottawa told CTV.ca on Saturday that the kits could be in the hands of cyclone survivors within days.
With files from The Associated Press
