|
NAYPYIDAW: Myanmar’s junta leader on Friday agreed to allow access
to all foreign aid workers to help with the relief operation after
Cyclone Nargis, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said.
Ban made the announcement after more than two
hours of talks with Senior General Than Shwe, the reclusive leader
of the country’s military regime whose refusal to let them in has
set off international outrage.
The decision could ease a three-week standoff
since the cyclone tore into Myanmar on May 2 to 3, leaving at least
133,000 people dead or missing and around 2.5 million more in need
of immediate aid.
International aid groups reacted cautiously,
stressing that they would need full access to the devastated
Irrawaddy Delta hit hardest in the disaster, something the United
Nations said was believed to be the agreement.
“He has agreed to allow all aid workers
regardless of nationalities,” Ban told reporters in the remote new
capital Naypyidaw following closed-door talks with Than Shwe, who
heads one of the world’s poorest and most isolated nations.
Asked if this was a breakthrough, Ban said:
“Yes, I think so.”
There was no immediate confirmation from
Myanmar. But a senior UN official who attended the meeting said Than
Shwe had accepted access to the delta.
“The general said he saw no reason why that
should not happen, as long as they were genuine humanitarian workers
and it was clear what they were going to be doing,” said the
official.
The Myanmar regime had not been able to give
this assurance earlier because they needed a “green light from the
top,” the official said. “We’ve got to turn that into the
reality now.”
International relief organizations have
repeatedly insisted that more people will die unless they get
immediate food, water, shelter and medical care.
While welcoming thousands of tons of donated
supplies, the regime has been blocking visas for most foreign
disaster management experts and insisted reports of survivors not
getting enough aid were the work of “traitors.”
It was not immediately clear if the regime,
which has often spurned the demands of the international community,
would allow aid from US naval ships nearby which it said before
would be rejected.
The breakthrough came on day two of Ban’s
visit—the first by a UN secretary general here in more than four
decades.
Ban said on arriving Thursday that he was coming
with a “message of hope” for the beleaguered victims of Cyclone
Nargis, the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history.
The international community has expressed anger
over the junta’s handling of the tragedy. Those foreign aid
workers who have been able to enter the country have mostly been
barred from the delta and restricted to the main city Yangon.
“The important issue is whether we can leave
Yangon or not,” Paul Risley, spokesman for the UN’s World Food
Program, said in neighboring Thailand.
-- AFP
|
