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UNITED NATIONS: United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon will visit Myanmar this week to discuss the delivery of international aid to the victims of the devastating cyclone, a spokesman said on Sunday.
"He will visit Myanmar this week," spokesman Yves Sorokobi told AFP, adding that Ban was due to leave New York on Tuesday and arrive in Myanmar on Wednesday or Thursday.
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The UN's top disaster official, John Holmes, arrived in Myanmar on Sunday for talks with the junta about widening the much-criticised relief effort after Cyclone Nargis hit more than two weeks ago, a UN official said.
Holmes was due to visit the devastated Irrawaddy Delta and hold talks with senior officials of the regime to get them to speed up the effort for two million cyclone survivors in desperate need of immediate aid.
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 from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the head of the junta, Than Shwe.
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. - AFP/de
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