World fears for plight of Myanmar cyclone victims

By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - International fears about the plight of 1.5 million victims in cyclone-ravaged Myanmar deepened on Tuesday as the United Nations and Western powers suggested helpless people could have been robbed of food and other aid.

As if fears of shoddy aid distribution were not enough, heavy rains pelted survivors in Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta, complicating the already slow delivery of aid to hundreds of thousands of homeless people facing hunger and disease.

As more foreign aid trickled into the former Burma, critics ratcheted up the pressure on its military rulers to accelerate a relief effort that is only delivering an estimated tenth of the supplies needed in the devastated delta.

Speaking at a regular news conference in New York, U.N. spokeswoman Michel Montas said the United Nations was concerned that some aid sent to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, might be diverted to people who were not victims of Cyclone Nargis.

And Britain's U.N. Ambassador John Sawers told reporters in New York that Britain had also heard reports that aid was being diverted but had no hard proof confirming them.

"If they do turn out to be true, we would be very concerned indeed," he said. "This just underlines the necessity of the Burmese authorities accepting that their own capacity to distribute aid to 1.5 million people" is insufficient.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad said concerns about aid diversion were another reason why "we want more people there to be able to distribute the aid."

In Brussels, the European Union called on the military junta to allow entry to aid workers to help victims avert "an even greater tragedy," and France urged U.N. action if the junta did not cooperate. Spain said that failure to allow aid in could amount to a crime against humanity.

The United Nations says more than 1.5 million people are struggling to survive and up to 100,000 are dead or missing after cyclone Nargis hit.

U.N. spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva it was also vital to secure the means to deliver aid.

"We need a kind of air bridge or sea bridge, and huge means (just) as the aid delivery we did in the tsunami, it is the same kind of logistical operation," said Byrs, of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The junta has accepted aid from the outside world but the help has only trickled in as the rulers have made it clear they do not want outsiders distributing it.

FREE AND UNFETTERED ACCESS

In a statement after emergency talks on Myanmar in Brussels, EU development ministers called on Yangon "to offer free and unfettered access to international humanitarian experts, including the expeditious delivery of visa and travel permits."

The EU ministers stopped short of endorsing a French call to deliver aid if necessary without the junta's permission.