US & France discuss ‘relief invasion’ as junta keeps outsiders at bay

Burma's Foreign Ministry has confirmed that it does not want foreign relief workers to distribute the aid that has begun to flow into the cyclone-hit country, writes Edward Loxton for The First Post. As further proof of its determination to keep outsiders from viewing the full extent of the devastation wrought by Cyclone Nargis, it has deported one foreign aid team and refused entry at Rangoon airport to another.

The Foreign Ministry admission that Burma "is not ready to receive search and rescue teams as well as media teams from foreign countries" explains why UN personnel and other international agencies seeking visas to enter Burma have faced so much prevarication. "The regime is just playing with us," complained one frustrated UN official, who filed a visa application in Bangkok on Monday, two days after the cyclone struck. "We are losing hope of ever getting in."

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is also losing patience with the obduracy of the regime, urging the generals to let relief teams in "before it's too late". He is under pressure from several governments, including the US and France, to back calls for a massive multinational 'invasion' of relief teams into Burma's devastated Irrawaddy delta region, regardless of whether or not they have Burmese regime approval. French diplomats point to UN provisions allowing breaches of national sovereignty if a government fails to protect its own people when catastrophe strikes.

Three of Burma's main supporters - China, India and Thailand - are also urging the regime to get international relief to the cyclone victims as quickly as possible. Thailand's Prime Minister, Samak Sundaravej, under American pressure, is to travel to Burma this weekend to urge the generals to relent. His office said on Friday that he had been trying without success to call Burma's junta leader, General Than Shwe, personally. Communications were down, the office said, but sceptical Thai officials suspect the general is trying to keep a low profile, battened down in his remote capital, Naypyidaw.

As Samak prepares to embark on what will probably be a hopeless mission, mountains of aid from several dozen countries and agencies continue to pile up in his capital, Bangkok. Many donors are reluctant to simply hand the supplies over to Burmese authorities, fearing they may never get through to those who need it. "We will not just bring our supplies to an airport, dump them and take off," said Anthony Banbury, regional director of the World Food Programme.

Meanwhile, as Than Shwe and his top brass hope the crisis will resolve itself without their intervention, preparations for Saturday's constitutional referendum proceed as if nothing has happened. In Rangoon, neighbourhood pro-government activist groups are knocking on doors soliciting support for the draft constitution with threats and vote-buying. Elsewhere in the city, opposition posters bearing a cross to indicate a negative vote are appearing on walls scarred by the cyclone.

In outlying towns and villages, evidence is surfacing of blatant efforts to influence the result of the referendum in the government's favour. Villagers in two mainly rural states, Arakan and Karen, report that local administration officials have been issuing ballot papers in advance with the junta's desired vote in favour of the constitution already filled in.

FIRST POSTED MAY 9, 2008