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YANGON: Top foreign officials headed Wednesday to Myanmar to press the defiant junta to open the doors to a massive cyclone relief effort for two million increasingly desperate survivors.
Hunger and disease are stalking victims who still do not have enough food, water or shelter almost two weeks after the disaster, and fresh rain overnight pushed the situation for many close to the breaking point.
Fast Facts
Survivors in the impoverished country's Irrawaddy Delta, where the powerful storm washed away entire villages in a tragedy that has left at least 62,000 people dead or missing, said the government still had not delivered aid.
The ruling generals, suspicious of much of the outside world, have welcomed donations of supplies from abroad but refused to allow in the foreign experts to oversee the complicated relief effort needed.
"There's been an opportunity lost," said Chris Lom of the International Organisation for Migration, after a meeting of relief groups in neighbouring Thailand, where dozens of experts are still awaiting visas to get in.
"What you need in a disaster is an incredibly fast and organised response, but that's not what we have," he said. "In terms of immediate response, maybe we're too late for that."
Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej and the European Union's Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel were separately headed into Myanmar, which has maintained that there is no need for foreign relief expertise "so far".
Michel's spokesman said he would "explain the necessity to open immediately a humanitarian corridor," adding: "Every hour counts."
The country's secretive military regime, which has ruled for nearly half a century, has long feared any outside influence that could weaken its tight control of virtually every aspect of life here.
For days, state-controlled television has neglected the grim scenes of despair from the ruins of the southern delta, instead broadcasting footage of generals handing out water and food to grateful citizens.
Survivors tell a different story, with many saying they have not received any aid from a government that insists it has the capability to manage the disaster -- a position rejected by international aid organisations.
The regime has also been tightening access to the region for journalists, making it even more difficult to get a full picture of the destruction in the south of the country, formerly known as Burma.
But reporters who have made it into the region relate scenes of misery and despair. New rains are pouring through makeshift shelters, meagre food supplies are getting soaked, and many fear more tragedy lies ahead.
"The rice we got is already wet from the rain. It's not very good to eat," said 22-year-old Thin Thin, sitting in a ramshackle hut made of wood and palm fronds -- her only shelter in the delta after her house was washed away.
"It doesn't help us much when it pours. We just sit in a corner for the whole night until the rain stops."
Meanwhile the United Nations warned Wednesday that another cyclone could be forming over Myanmar, where the world body has said that the actual death toll from Cyclone Nargis, which hit May 2 and 3, could be around 100,000.
US President George W. Bush and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon have added their voices to the criticism of the junta.
Ban, using unusually strong language for a UN leader, said on Monday that the situation was at a "critical point" and that the government had to "put its people's lives first".
On Tuesday, his spokeswoman Michele Montas said at UN headquarters in New York that he still had been unable to speak to the country's leaders despite trying to call them for days.
"I will not say that they have refused to pick up the call," Montas said. "What I can say is that we were not able to reach them." - AFP/ac
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