YANGON - Agence France-Presse


The United States sent its first aid flight to Myanmar yesterday but experts warned the relief effort was floundering and 1.5 million cyclone survivors were at grave risk from hunger and disease.

The U.S. military transport plane laden with emergency supplies including equipment to provide clean drinking water was permitted to land by the ruling junta which has been condemned for stalling the disaster response.

"We know that it is a small salve for a much larger wound. More has to get into Burma (Myanmar). More has to reach the areas that have been hardest hit" said U.S. ambassador to Thailand Eric John using the country's former name.

"It is absolutely critical that disaster response specialists be allowed into Burma. It is important that we and the international community be allowed to help the victims of this unimaginable horror."

The flow of international aid into Myanmar which says 62000 people are dead or missing has increased in the past two days but relief agencies say much more is needed to avert a humanitarian catastrophe.

The UN said the relief operation was only at 10 percent of the level needed to bring water food and supplies to desperate survivors and that just 20 percent of the food required was making its way in.

Suspicious generals:

In Yangon the country's main city the rice warehouse of the UN's food agency was empty. "I would urge that we don't judge the success of this operation by flights arriving alone" Richard Horsey a spokesman for the UN's humanitarian arm said in Bangkok. "This is a huge disaster" Horsey said in an interview with AFP TV. "It would overwhelm the capacity of any country."

The military government said some parts of the disaster zone were still cut off 10 days after cyclone struck and that authorities had not been able to reach people there on the ground -- and could only drop supplies from the air.

Deeply suspicious of any outside influences that could undermine their total control the generals reiterated that foreign specialists -- who have the expertise to oversee the relief effort -- would not be put in charge.

"Faster progress on this issue is crucial to the effectiveness of the response" said Catherine Bragg the UN's deputy emergency relief coordinator.

"If we do not act now and we do not act fast more lives will be lost."

Ten days after the tragedy struck bloated corpses are still floating in the water disease is starting to break out among survivors with little food or shelter and many say the government has given them nothing.

A Western diplomat in Yangon said there were reports of extensive dysentery outbreaks and that cholera typhoid and malaria could follow quickly raising the toll which the UN believes exceeds 100000.

"There's no evidence of a major spread yet but some villages and communities have been quarantined no one is going in or out to try to prevent the spread of disease" he told AFP.

The diplomat said the leadership failed to comprehend that their response to the disaster must be scaled up "ten or 100 times over."