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SINGAPORE: Foreign aid to Myanmar’s hundreds of thousands of
cyclone victims must have “no strings attached,” Deputy Defense
Minister Aye Myint said Sunday, insisting the focus was now on
reconstruction.
“We would warmly welcome any assistance and
aid which are provided with genuine goodwill from any country or
organization provided that there are no strings attached, or
politicization involved,” he told a high-level security forum in
Singapore that included representatives of donor countries.
He stressed that Myanmar was now concentrating
on reconstruction and repeated the latest official toll of 77,738
dead and 55,917 missing, as well as the estimate of $10.67 billion
in cyclone damage.
“For those groups who are interested in
rehabilitation and reconstruction, we are ready to accept them in
accordance with our priorities,” Major General Aye Myint said.
He added that “we would consider allowing them
[into Myanmar] if they wish to engage in rehabilitation and
reconstruction work, township by township.”
The Myanmar junta official was speaking at the
Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual conference in Singapore of defense
ministers, military officials and security experts from Asia, North
America and Europe.
Myanmar has asked its Southeast Asian neighbors
to coordinate the international cyclone relief effort, but aid
workers on the ground have expressed frustration over the regime’s
handling of the humanitarian crisis.
Singapore, which currently chairs the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) that includes
Myanmar, has deplored the slow response of the military regime to
the disaster.
“It’s regrettable that the Myanmar
government has responded in this way. Myanmar’s partners in Asean
have all been deeply concerned by the massive suffering of the
victims, which a more rapid international relief operation could
have minimized,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a keynote
address to the security forum on Friday.
At the same forum, US Defense Secretary Robert
Gates said Saturday the junta’s slow response to the cyclone
disaster had cost “tens of thousands of lives.”
“Our ships and aircraft awaited country
approval so they could act promptly to save thousands of
lives—approval of the kind granted by Indonesia immediately after
the 2004 tsunami and by Bangladesh after a fierce cyclone just last
November,” Gates said.
“With Burma, the situation has been very
different—at a cost of tens of thousands of lives.”
-- AFP
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