Aid workers anxiously await Myanmar's permission

By Darren Schuettler

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Paul Heymans, a disaster-hardened aid coordinator who has worked in war-ravaged Darfur and the Kashmir earthquake, is frustrated as he waits in Bangkok for a visa to cyclone-hit Myanmar.

The 38-year-old Dutch logistics expert for Medicins Sans Frontieres is among several dozen foreign aid workers cooling their heels around the world as they wait for the former Burma's ruling generals to let them in.

"Getting there is half the job in the first couple of days in a disaster," he told Reuters.

"At the moment we are sitting in Bangkok waiting for the visa situation to get sorted," said Heymans, one of four MSF experts waiting in the Thai capital for visas to join their largely local staff.

Myanmar has allowed a handful of cargo flights to land in the former capital Yangon and unload emergency supplies for up to one million people left homeless by Cyclone Nargis.

Nearly $40 million in cyclone aid has been pledged from around the world.

But six days into a disaster that killed nearly 22,500 and left 41,000 missing, aid groups in Bangkok were still in the dark about when they might get visas -- permits tightly guarded by a regime deeply suspicious of the outside world.

Richard Horsey, a spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian affairs coordination office, said 30-40 "critical" U.N. and other aid agency staff were in the visa queue, most of them in Bangkok.