Myanmar's military junta, said they will receive aid from neighbours

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 regime 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.The reclusive junta leader Than Shwe spent a second consecutive day 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 single public appearance or remark about the disaster that has left at least 133,000 dead or missing.

AFP/MYANMAR NEWS AGENCY**
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Despite the gentler tone, Myanmar stopped short of allowing a full-scale relief operation, even in the face of warnings that people could soon start to 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.The UN's top aid official John Holmes was finally allowed Monday to glimpse just 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 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.

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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 Ki-moon and ASEAN later confirmed the meeting would take place in a statement.

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ASEAN has been frequently criticised for its failure to force Myanmar's junta to respect human rights and promote democracy, notably when the military crushed last year's pro-democracy protests.The regional grouping warned potential donors that "international assistance given to Myanmar, given through ASEAN, should not be politicised."Myanmar's reluctance to allow in just a fraction 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 foreign ministry welcome the ASEAN deal as "a first step forward."

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But the delta region remained all but closed off to reporters and most other foreigners, making it impossible to get an up-to-date independent 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.Holmes, the UN's relief coordinator, arrived Sunday in Myanmar carrying a letter to junta leader Than Shwe from Ban Ki-moon.Ban himself is to visit the country later in the week, after failing to get Than Shwe even to take his phone calls.

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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 "be the driving force to 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."
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