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YANGON: Myanmar on Monday declared three days of mourning for cyclone victims after agreeing to an international aid effort led by its Southeast Asian neighbours to help two million survivors in dire need.
The junta said the national mourning period would begin with the lowering of all flags to half-mast on Tuesday - 18 days after Cyclone Nargis first pummelled this isolated and impoverished country once known as Burma.
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Myanmar's military leader Than Shwe spent a second consecutive day on Monday touring the disaster zone, venturing into the hardest-hit regions of the Irrawaddy Delta for the first time, state television said.
Until Sunday, the senior general had not made a public appearance or remark about the disaster that has left at least 133,000 dead or missing.
Despite the gentler tone, Myanmar stopped short of allowing a full-scale relief operation, even in the face of warnings that people could die without help.
Myanmar did agree at regional talks in Singapore to allow the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to coordinate an international relief effort, after resisting multiple foreign attempts to deliver aid to hard-hit areas.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who had earlier failed to get Than Shwe even to take his phone calls, will visit Myanmar on Thursday and will head directly to the areas hardest hit by cyclone Nargis, his spokeswoman said.
Michele Montas corrected an earlier statement on Monday in which she had said Ban would arrive in Yangon on Wednesday, after leaving for Thailand on Tuesday.
Ban "is scheduled to meet in Myanmar with senior government officials. He will travel again to Bangkok for a series of bilateral meetings on Friday, to return again to Yangon on Sunday for a pledging conference that will be co-sponsored by the UN and ASEAN. He will return to New York on Monday," Montas added, stressing that the Myanmar trip was "strictly a humanitarian visit."
The world body's top aid official John Holmes was finally allowed on Monday to glimpse how desperate the situation has become, as he toured part of the southern delta, where entire villages were washed away.
Despite Myanmar's compromise with ASEAN, the regime has yet to soften its refusal to allow in foreign aid workers in the numbers needed to reach the estimated 2.4 million people still in desperate need.
Singapore's Foreign Minister George Yeo said after hosting his counterparts in the city-state that Myanmar's Nyan Win had put the damage from the cyclone at more than 10 billion US dollars.
Yeo said the junta also had agreed to accept the immediate despatch of medical teams from other ASEAN nations.
Thirty medical personnel from each of Myanmar's nine ASEAN partner states will be sent to the country, in addition to contingents from India, Bangladesh and China.
"We have to look at specific needs and specific offers of help. There will not be an uncontrolled entry of foreign personnel into Myanmar," Yeo said.
The Singapore foreign minister also said ASEAN would work with the United Nations to hold an "international pledging conference" in the country's main city Yangon on May 25 to pool aid.
UN chief Ban and ASEAN called in a joint-statement for "the international community to rise to the occasion and translate their solidarity and sympathy into concrete commitments."
The United States said that it was considering whether to attend the Yangon conference.
ASEAN warned potential donors that "international assistance given to Myanmar, given through the regional grouping, should not be politicised."
Myanmar's reluctance to allow in all but a tiny proportion of the relief needed has frustrated the UN and other humanitarian agencies, as well as the French and US navies waiting off the coast with aid-laden ships.
The French and British governments welcomed the ASEAN deal as a step in the right direction.
But the delta region remained all but closed off to reporters and most other foreigners, making it impossible to get picture of the situation on the ground.
People who have slipped through say the situation is almost unbearable - hungry people in leaking huts, stinking corpses rotting by the roadside, and most survivors still without any government aid.
Thai Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama said after the Singapore talks that the aid effort was "better late than never," and the ASEAN-led mechanism would "mobilise resources and humanitarian assistance from countries around the world."
Myanmar was "more receptive" to receiving medical teams and after that, it "might be more willing or receptive" to taking foreign aid workers, he added.
Nyan Win insisted his government had never been opposed to foreign aid, vowing: "If we need to issue the visas (to foreign aid workers), we will issue it." - CNA/de
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