U.N. chief goes to Myanmar to lobby junta to allow aid

BANGKOK, Thailand -- U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon flew to Myanmar today for the diplomatic challenge of a lifetime -- persuading the ruling generals to let in a torrent of foreign assistance for cyclone victims.

The U.N. chief departed from Bangkok early today, after telling reporters hours earlier that Myanmar was facing a "critical moment."

He urged the junta Wednesday to focus on saving lives, not on politics, after it refused an American proposal for U.S. warships to deliver relief supplies.

"We must do our utmost for the people of Myanmar," Ban told reporters after arriving in Bangkok. "The government itself acknowledges that there has never been a disaster on this scale in the history of their country."

By the junta's own count, at least 134,000 people are dead or missing from the May 2-3 cyclone. The U.N. says up to 2.5 million survivors are hungry and homeless and there are worries about disease outbreaks in the Irrawaddy River delta.

"The issues of assistance and aid in Myanmar should not be politicized. Our focus now is on saving lives," Ban said.

Yet Ban, a career diplomat who was South Korea's foreign minister before taking the U.N. post, is wading into a situation fraught with politics. Myanmar's top generals have always viewed relations with the world through a dark, political prism.

The isolationist regime is deeply suspicious of outsiders. And the junta is antagonistic toward the United Nations over its lead role in international pressures to restore democracy, seeing the world body as a stooge of the United States and other Western nations.

Ban hopes to put those suspicions on the shelf for now, arguing that he is not coming to attack the military regime, but only to address overwhelming humanitarian needs.

"We have a functioning relief program in place. But so far we have been able to reach only about 25 percent of the people in need," Ban said.

Myanmar has slowly geared up to receive material assistance for storm victims, particularly from neighboring nations, but it is still reluctant to accept more than a relative handful of foreign rescue and relief workers experienced in disaster work.

World Food Program officials in Bangkok said Myanmar had agreed to allow the U.N. agency to use 10 helicopters to deliver aid to stranded cyclone survivors beginning Thursday.

It wasn't clear when the operation would start. The helicopters had to be chartered, flown in on cargo planes to Thailand and reassembled. "We are doing everything we can to get them in as soon as possible," WFP official Marcus Prior said.

He said the helicopters, each capable of carrying three tons of supplies, had permission to fly directly to the devastated delta region, rather than having to drop off their loads at the airport in Yangon, Myanmar's main city.

But Myanmar rejected such help from the United States, whose military is equipped to provide immense and immediate logistical help. Myanmar's state-controlled media said U.S. helicopters and warships were not welcome to join the relief effort.

The United States, France and Britain have naval vessels loaded with supplies -- and the means to deliver them -- off Myanmar's coast, waiting for a green light. The article did not say whether the French and British supplies would be allowed.