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UNITED NATIONS - UN humanitarian chief John Holmes awaited Thursday a visa to travel to Myanmar where he hopes to press the government to allow in foreign aid to help survivors of the deadly cyclone, the UN said.
As state media raised the death toll to 43,318, with nearly 28,000 still missing and another two million in dire need of help, Myanmar's Southeast Asian neighbours geared up for talks aimed at convening a high-level donors meeting.
UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said Holmes, who heads the body's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, had requested a visa "and we expect he will get it," adding he should be travelling "in the next five to six days."
The United Nations has warned that, almost two weeks after Cyclone Nargis ripped through Myanmar, many more people may die unless they receive help.
But the country's ruling generals have dug in their heels, and again rebuffed calls to allow in the foreign relief workers needed to quickly deliver food, water, shelter and medicine.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned in London: "We will stop at nothing in trying to pressure the regime into doing what any regime should have done long ago.
"And there should be nothing, nothing that stops that aid getting to the people of the country now."
UN officials are waiting for the emergency ministerial meeting scheduled by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for Monday in Singapore to work out details of a broader aid donors conference on Myanmar.
The ASEAN countries "are going to be discussing where that pledging conference can take place and who can participate," Montas said.
A UN source said the meeting would probably be at ministerial level, and would likely take place in Southeast Asia, probably Bangkok, with May 24 suggested as
a possible date.
Cyclone Nargis hit overnight on May 2, tearing through the rice-growing Irrawaddy Delta and wiping out entire villages with powerful winds and giant waves that turned much of the area into a disease-infested swamp.
At first, journalists returned from the area with tales of misery -- corpses rotting in the water as untold thousands of survivors lined the streets begging for food.
Now the military rulers have sealed off the region to reporters and insist the impoverished country, once a rich British colony known as Burma, can stand on its own.
The government-controlled New Light of Myanmar newspaper said the country's people could rebuild the devastated region without help.
"They will not rely too much on international assistance and will reconstruct the nation on (a) self-reliance basis," it said.
International leaders have lambasted Myanmar's government for not opening their doors to aid groups.
"We are way behind the curve compared to any other international disaster in recent memory," said Mark Malloch-Brown, a top British diplomat, in Bangkok.
"I cannot recall a relief operation where, at least the international response, has been subjected to such delays."
Despite the massive humanitarian emergency, the military government Thursday announced victory in a national referendum on a new constitution with 92.4 percent of the ballots.
It said the turnout in the vote, held last Saturday with parts of the country still underwater and tens of thousands of people unaccounted for, was 99 percent. Affected areas go to the polls later this month.
The government said the vote, the first in Myanmar since 1990, was a step on the road to democracy, but critics say it will only tighten the military's grip on
power.
Meanwhile the government is pushing survivors out of monasteries where they fled after the storm -- perhaps wary of the role Buddhist monks played in last year's abortive anti-government uprising.
Monks and evacuees from the main city Yangon as well as Labutta, one of the hardest-hit delta towns, said thousands of people were being forced out of monasteries.
New rains have added to the misery for increasingly desperate people at risk of everything from snakebites and pneumonia to outright starvation.
"Half the people displaced aren't in actual buildings," said Kathryn Rawe, spokeswoman for Save the Children, an aid group. "They're basically under plastic, and it's raining. It breaks your heart." - AFP/ir
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