Anger, despair in main Myanmar city as prices soar

YANGON (Reuters) - Anger and despair are growing among the 5 million residents of Myanmar's main city in the aftermath of the devastating Cyclone Nargis as petrol queues stretch for kilometers and food prices soar.

The overall mood, however, is one of resignation rather than revolution in a country that has been under uncompromising military rule for the last 46 years.

For now, any repeat of last September's anti-regime protests appears a distant prospect -- especially with memories of the army's bloody crackdown still fresh in people's minds.

"There won't be demonstrations," one taxi driver told Reuters on Wednesday. "People don't want to be shot."

Although the former capital avoided the kind of devastation that ravaged the Irrawaddy delta to the southwest, killing at least 22,000 and leaving another 41,000 missing, people are struggling for basic necessities.

Many blame the junta, which has admitted it is struggling to cope but which still appears reluctant to open its doors to a full-scale international relief effort in the hardest-hit areas.

Soldiers were conspicuous by their absence on the streets of Yangon, where power lines lie crumpled under uprooted trees. The city, formally called Rangoon, used to be one of Asia's most verdant cities. In some areas, all its trees have been flattened.

The junta insists it has enough rice stocks to keep people fed, but the price of small bags of the staple have doubled since the cyclone tore through the delta, the country's rice bowl.

"People are angry not at the shopkeepers, but at the government," said Dawood, a Muslim elder standing on the steps of a central Yangon mosque stroking his wispy beard. The mosque has bought a pump powered by kerosene -- there is still no electricity four days after Nargis wreaked its havoc -- to supply hundreds of households with water from an artesian well that sits beneath it.