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NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar - Myanmar's junta leader on Friday agreed to allow access to all foreign aid workers to help with the relief operation after Cyclone Nargis, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said.
Ban made the announcement after more than two hours of talks with Senior General Than Shwe, the reclusive leader of the country's military regime whose refusal to let them in earlier set off international outrage.
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The decision eases a three-week standoff since the cyclone tore into the country on May 2-3, leaving at least 133,000 people dead or missing and around 2.5 million more in dire need of immediate aid.
"He has agreed to allow all aid workers," Ban told reporters in the remote new capital Naypyidaw following closed-door talks with the 75-year-old general who heads one of the poorest and most isolated nations in the world.
Asked if this was a breakthrough, Ban said: "Yes, I think so. He has agreed to allow all aid workers regardless of nationalities."
International relief organisations have repeatedly insisted that more people will die unless they get immediate food, water, shelter and medical care.
While welcoming thousands of tonnes of donated supplies, the regime has been blocking visas for most foreign disaster management experts and insisted reports of survivors not getting enough aid were the work of "traitors".
It was not immediately clear if the announcement meant that the regime, which has often spurned the demands of the international community, would allow aid from US naval ships nearby which it said before would be rejected.
The breakthrough came on day two of Ban's visit -- the first by a UN secretary general here in more than four decades.
Ban said on arriving Thursday that he was coming with a "message of hope" for the beleaguered victims of the worst natural disaster in the nation's history, which devastated much of the southern Irrawaddy Delta.
The international community has been angered by the government's handling of the tragedy, and the continuing reports of the destruction and suffering on the ground filtering out despite efforts to close off the disaster zone.
Ban was taken by helicopter to two locations Thursday in the southern delta -- a region that has been sealed off by the junta before the new announcement on access.
France had queried whether the regime was guilty of crimes against humanity, and said it would push for a meeting of the UN Security Council if Ban's visit did not yield results and get aid to those in need.
Prime Minister Thein Sein told diplomats on Thursday that the provision of food, clothing, shelter and medical care was "now almost complete at this stage."
But AFP reporters who have been slipped through the security cordon have found scenes of misery in the delta, where entire villages were washed away and corpses were still floating on the water three weeks on.
Many villagers say they have not received any government aid. Reporters saw people jumping into dirty river waters to retrieve packages of noodles thrown there by volunteers working in remote areas.
The government has meanwhile pressed ahead with plans to hold a second round of a referendum on Saturday in areas hit hard by the storm.
The vote to approve a new constitution is the first in Myanmar since a general election in 1990, when opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party won in a landslide but she was placed under house arrest.
The first round was held one week after the storm hit.
The regime said 92 percent then voted in favour of the charter, which would ban Aung San Suu Kyi from ever holding office. - AFP/vm
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