to drink?

The answer is one of principle and practice. It'll be hard to do, and there is no acknowledged international law that says they can do it against the will of Burma's rulers. Also, the Americans seem reluctant to be distracted by an elaborate operation in Burma when they are eyeing up another military operation further west, in Iran. (President Bush has been sending some heavy hints that he wants to do something about Iran and its sponsorship both of violence in Iraq and Hezbollah militancy in Lebanon.)

The contrast with what is going on in China is startling. China, along with Russia, has opposed any UN action to force Burma's generals to let aid and relief workers in. Yet when the earthquake struck in southwest China earlier this week, the government admitted the full scale of the disaster from the first, sent in troops and then even more troops, admitted the huge difficulties of the rescue, and invited foreign assistance.

The most powerful case for a rapid uninvited international aid operation in Burma

was made last week by France's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, the founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres. He said there should be coercive action to help the flood victims under the principle of 'Responsibility To Protect' agreed at the UN World Summit in 2005. This allows for intervention when populations suffer at the hands of their governments and regimes. Kouchner wanted a UN resolution that "authorises the delivery (of aid) and imposes this on the Burmese government".

The relief agencies said this wouldn't work because air-dropping supplies is notoriously an exercise of more miss than hit. The British said the resolution would just annoy the Burmese generals even more. Most important, Gareth Evans, president of the International Crisis Group, who helped draft the 'Responsibility to Protect' (known as R2P) convention, says that it doesn't cover the distress of peoples from natural disaster or the victims of passive neglect by their governments. R2P was aimed, he says, at tackling "genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity," ie