U.S. ships head for Myanmar as officials decry delay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Navy ships steamed toward Myanmar on Thursday in hopes of helping the stricken country's disaster relief effort, while senior U.S. officials decried Yangon's slowness to accept outside aid.

U.S. Air Force cargo planes loaded with supplies and personnel also began arriving in nearby Thailand, where U.S. officials have established a staging point for possible humanitarian operations in the south.

The United Nations estimates that 1.5 million people have been severely affected by Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, where 100,000 are feared dead.

"There is an opportunity here to save a lot of lives and we are fully prepared to help and to help right away, and it would be a tragedy if these assets -- if people didn't take advantage of them," U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters.

The Navy said four ships, including the destroyer USS Mustin and the three-vessel Essex Expeditionary Strike Force, had begun heading for Myanmar from the Gulf of Thailand after the Essex deployed helicopters to Thailand for possible relief operations.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the ships would arrive in the vicinity of Myanmar in roughly five days.

Earlier on Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad said Washington was "outraged" by Myanmar's delays in allowing relief workers and aid shipments into devastated areas.

Ky Luu, director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance at USAID, said existing stocks of relief supplies in Myanmar might be enough for perhaps only 10,000 people.

He said one possibility would be to air-drop aid, but Gates and Mullen emphasized that no relief operations could occur without approval by the Myanmar government.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Susan Cornwell in Washington and Louis Charbonneau in New York, editing by David Alexander)