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WASHINGTON - US lawmakers have asked President George W Bush to consider "humanitarian intervention" in cyclone-hit Myanmar after its military rulers refused to allow foreign experts to direct relief efforts despite rising deaths.
Forty-one members of the House of Representatives wrote to Bush on Thursday asking him to "strongly consider" backing efforts by France, Britain, Germany, Denmark and other nations to gain entry into the devastated Irrawaddy Delta region "to provide urgent life-saving humanitarian aid."
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From both sides of the aisle, the lawmakers asked the US leader to "immediately and urgently" consult with the French, British, German, Danish and other supportive and regional governments as Myanmar's military government said Friday more than 133,000 people were dead or missing in the cyclone disaster.
The new toll -- nearly double Thursday's official figure of 71,000 and two weeks after the storm left the country's rice-growing south in ruins -- came as the military rulers again rejected calls to let foreign experts direct the massive relief effort for 2.5 million needy survivors.
The lawmakers said Bush should pursue the talks to determine the extent to which the United States could provide support for a "peaceful international humanitarian intervention and life saving humanitarian aid" to Cyclone Nargis victims amid "the military regime's intransigence."
Myanmar's government has insisted it can manage the catastrophe alone, despite urgent international pleas to open up its doors and avert a second wave of death among desperate victims short of food, water, shelter and medical care.
The generals have accepted hundreds of tonnes of relief supplies but have all but sealed off the disaster zone, keeping out most foreigners and insisting that the country can rebuild on its own.
The American lawmakers said it now appeared that China would block any move by the UN Security Council to authorize relief because of the objections of Myanmar's government.
US helicopters, ships, trucks, and airplanes filled with life-saving supplies meanwhile sit unused in Myanmar's neighbouring countries, they noted.
"We now face the possible death of 2.5 million people in Burma (Myanmar).
Thirteen days after the cyclone hit, there is no more time to wait," they warned in the letter, a copy of which was made available to AFP.
Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu has also written to Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, saying the UN Security Council should authorize immediate shipments of aid to Myanmar "over the objections of the military regime."
"The refusal of the Burmese military regime to accept full, adequate humanitarian aid from the international community is nothing short of criminal, and unprecedented in recent history," said the former South African
archbishop.
He said that the Myanmar government had "effectively declared war on its own population and is committing crimes against humanity."
Citing possible objections by China and Russia at the UN Security Council, Tutu warned that the world could make "the same mistake it made on Rwanda, accepting solutions that were guaranteed to fail."
Myanmar dissident and pro-democracy groups meanwhile said they would hold protests and vigils on Saturday outside the White House and in Australia, France, Hong Kong, Thailand, Canada, Chile and the Czech Republic to back the calls for humanitarian intervention in Myanmar.
Aung Din, executive director of the US Campaign for Burma (Myanmar), said: "We cannot wait any longer for nations to sit around and talk about aid relief.
"Every day that the international community falls for the junta's lies is another day that more people are going to die."
Jean-Maurice Ripert, the French envoy to the United Nations, told reporters in New York Friday that he appealed during a UN General Assembly session for the United Nations "to finally react strongly, very strongly" to the Myanmar military government's defiance.
"Tens of thousands of lives have been lost, hundreds of thousands could be lost," he said. - AFP/ir
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