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PATHEIN, Myanmar: Myanmar's junta Saturday held a vote on a new constitution, ignoring pleas to focus on delivering urgently needed food supplies to 1.5 million cyclone victims facing disease and hunger.
The referendum being held in all but the most devastated parts of the country is the first balloting to take place in Myanmar since disallowed elections which democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi won in a landslide in 1990.
Voting was postponed by two weeks in the main city and former capital of Yangon, as well as most of the Irrawaddy delta where Cyclone Nargis struck last week, leaving 65,000 dead or missing according to the junta's count.
Fast Facts
Although Myanmar says it will now accept aid from the United States, it has tussled with the World Food Programme over unloading UN supplies, triggering a brief suspension of the global body's relief flights Friday.
"My understanding is that it has not yet been released into our hands, but we are working around the clock to get access," Marcus Prior, a Bangkok-based spokesman for WFP, said of a vital UN aid shipment impounded by authorities.
"We have people who know how to work these channels, and they are," he said as the supplies -- enough high-energy biscuits to feed 95,000 survivors -- remained stuck at Yangon airport more than 24 hours after being delivered.
"It is frustrating but that doesn't mean we're going to throw up our hands and give up. To the contrary -- we're going to work harder," he said.
The UN has launched an emergency appeal for 187 million US dollars to help the cyclone victims, but Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has not yet succeeded in speaking directly with the reclusive junta leader Than Shwe, a UN source said.
The junta have also refused to allow in foreign aid workers to direct the relief effort, drawing condemnation from the UN and world leaders who urged the ruling generals to open their doors.
Than Shwe, 75, ignored calls to delay the referendum and allow in foreign experts, despite warnings that without international aid, people who survived the storm's onslaught in the delta could face a new tragedy as disease and hunger stalk the region.
Detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party has berated the junta for proceeding with the vote in the wake of the cyclone, with some polling stations in the delta set up just blocks from makeshift shelters crowded with evacuees whose homes were destroyed.
The regime says the charter will clear the way for democratic elections in two years, but critics say the document will ensure the generals remain dominant in a country that has been ruled by the military for nearly half a century.
Aung San Suu Kyi's party has called on voters to reject the constitution, but has had little means of spreading its message.
Her National League for Democracy is not allowed to have any offices outside Yangon, which was itself devastated by the storm.
Speaking publicly or passing leaflets about the referendum is illegal, and the opposition has no access to the tightly controlled national media, which has been broadcasting propaganda tunes promoting the charter.
"With this situation, it is not the appropriate time to hold the referendum," NLD spokesman Nyan Win said.
The situation on the ground is one of horror -- with starving survivors picking for food in waterways littered with the bodies of the dead -- and aid groups agree time is running out.
Countless masses are suffering in the waterlogged southern delta, where entire villages were washed or blown away.
"I am angry with the government," said Dowla Shwe, a single mother with five children who said her house was one of the many that simply vanished when the powerful storm tore through her village.
She said the military had brought no aid or food -- and that she feared her children would now starve to death.
"If they can't help," she said, "why not allow foreigners to come and help us?" - AFP/ac
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