UN Aid Plane Lands in Myanmar

GENEVA (AP) — The first U.N. aid flight arrived in Myanmar on Thursday, bringing an Italian-financed shipment carrying 25 metric tons (27.5 tons) of emergency response equipment for cyclone survivors, a spokeswoman said.

However, international attempts to get relief supplies and aid workers into the isolationist country apparently were still encountering problems as pressure continued on the military junta to accept more help for the estimated 1 million people left homeless by last weekend's devastating storm.

"What we are witnessing today in Myanmar is unprecedented devastation," Pierrette Vu Thi, a UNICEF emergency relief official, said in stressing the need for a massive global response.

Arrival times for three other U.N. flights were uncertain, said Caroline Hurford, a spokeswoman for the Rome-based World Food Program of the United Nations. The planes — carrying emergency food supplies — were supposed to fly Thursday from Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.

Four U.N. experts were at Bangkok Airport waiting to fly to Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The four disaster assessment specialists are Asian nationals who can enter the country without visas. Obtaining visas for non-Asian relief workers remained slow.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called the Myanmar ambassador to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin on Thursday and pressed his appeal for the country to admit aid deliveries as soon as possible.

"I asked him urgently to convey this message to his government in Myanmar," Steinmeier told reporters after the meeting.

Steinmeier said 10 German water supply experts were on standby to travel there once visas are granted.

"The country must open up so that there is not a catastrophe after the catastrophe, so that hundreds of thousands more people do not fall ill," Germany's Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said on Germany's N24 television.

Vu Thi said 130 UNICEF staff — Burmese and foreigners — were working in the country before the cyclone, and all have since been redeployed with government permission to help out in the recovery effort.

But Vu Thi said an additional 12 officials have yet to gain visa clearance to enter the country. They are among the 100 U.N. staff still awaiting visas.

UNICEF said Thursday that a commercial plane with vitally needed water purification tablets would fly from Denmark to Bangkok, Thailand, on Thursday. The shipment is to continue on to Myanmar on Friday, the U.N. children's agency said.

The tablets are enough to make 5 million liters of water safe to drink, UNICEF said

Yoo Myung-hwan, South Korea's foreign minister, said the country would provide US$2 million (euro1.3 million) in urgent humanitarian aid.

"Also, we're preparing to send a group of medical assistants," Yoo said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged Myanmar's government to expedite the arrival of aid workers and relief supplies "in every way possible" and welcomed approval for the initial team of experts from the world body.

Aid shipments have arrived from a number of donor nations and distribution is under way by workers for different organizations already in the country before the storm, officials and Myanmar state television said.

Southeast Asian countries appealed to the world Thursday to keep sending aid.

"Please keep the help coming, keep the contributions coming and if you have to, go to Thailand, park there and wait for redistribution from there," said Association of Southeast Nations secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan.

The junta was not allowing military planes from the United States — which has been outspokenly critical of the government — to fly in critical relief goods.

Eric John, U.S. ambassador to Thailand, said U.S. and Thai authorities thought they had permission from Myanmar to land U.S. military C-130s. But Myanmar officials later made it clear that this was not the case.

Thailand's Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej offered to negotiate on Washington's behalf to persuade the junta to accept U.S. aid.

The U.S. military has begun positioning people and equipment to be ready. An Air Force C-130 has landed in Thailand and another was on the way, U.S. officials said.

The U.S. Navy is still in a holding position, officials said, but it has three ships participating in an exercise in the Gulf of Thailand that could help in any relief effort.

One of them, the USS Essex, is an amphibious assault ship with 23 helicopters aboard, including 19 that are capable of lifting cargo from ship to shore, which could prove vital in getting supplies to hard-to-reach areas.

The U.N. children's agency is currently working to improve sanitation and hygiene in Myanmar to protect children from diarrhea and infectious diseases such as dengue fever, which spreads from mosquitoes that thrive in bad water conditions, Vu Thi said.

UNICEF is distributing medicine kits, water purification tablets, salts, tarpaulins, mosquito nets and cooking equipment, and more supplies are on the way, she said.

She said schools were another priority.

"In such a situation, getting children back in school is really key to restoring a sense of normalcy for the traumatized population, and in particular the traumatized children," Vu Thi told reporters in Geneva.

UNICEF is hoping to get Burmese children back in school by June 1: "I know this seems like a very unrealistic target, but this is what we are going to strive for," Vu Thi said.

More than 22,000 people were killed in the high winds, floods and high tidal waves that hit Myanmar last weekend, officials said. More than 42,000 others are missing.

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