U.S. flight lands in Myanmar as aid trickles in

By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - The first U.S. military aid flight to Myanmar landed in Yangon on Monday but emergency supplies remained at a trickle for 1.5 million people facing hunger and disease in the cyclone-ravaged Irrawaddy delta.

The C-130 military transport plane flew in from an air base in neighboring Thailand carrying water, mosquito nets and blankets as U.S. President George W. Bush condemned Myanmar's military leaders for being either "isolated or callous."

The junta's navy Commander-in-Chief Soe Thein received the U.S. supplies, which were accompanied by Admiral Timothy Keating, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, and Henrietta Fore, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

A stream of other aid flights had already landed in Yangon, but only a fraction of the help needed has got to people in the flooded delta, partly because the junta has kept foreign aid and logistics experts out of the country or in Yangon.

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made clear his exasperation with the junta and its "unacceptably slow" response to Cyclone Nargis since it struck Myanmar on May 3.

Bush, who shortly before the cyclone had imposed fresh sanctions on Myanmar to pressure it toward democratic rule, said in a radio interview with CBS that the junta was apparently more interested in power than in its people.

Noting the leaders had moved the capital away from the biggest city Yangon, he said: "either they are isolated or callous."

Fore told reporters in Bangkok she had won permission to fly in two more planes on Tuesday but there was no breakthrough on letting foreign helicopters and boats ferry supplies into the delta.

"It's a good first step," she said, adding U.S. aid was increasing to $16 million, from $3.5 million.

Delivery of the U.S. aid shipment was broadcast on the tightly controlled Myanmar state television.

Keating said the U.S. navy would have three ships in international waters off the coast of Myanmar in 36 to 48 hours. It also had 4,000 Marines and a "large number" of cargo-carrying helicopters on stand-by in Thailand.

"We're limited only by the permission from the authorities in Burma," he said at the Thai air base.

WAITING FOR VISAS

"We think we need to be moving 375 tonnes of food a day down into the affected areas. We are doing less than 20 percent of that," World Food Program spokesman Marcus Prior said in the Thai capital Bangkok.

At the United Nations in New York, Ban delivered his most critical comments so far of the Myanmar authorities' response and said: "We are at a critical point."