EU holds emergency talks on Burma

13/05/2008 22:50:12

European Union development ministers held emergency talks on Burma on Tuesday, seeking ways to convince the military government to admit foreign aid to help increasingly desperate cyclone victims.

"People are suffering. There is a lot of need and the European Union is not only collecting the help, we are also responsible for its proper distribution," said Andrej Ster, the Slovenian foreign ministry's top development official.

Mr Ster, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, added that the ministers wished to "underline to the authorities in (Burma) that they should allow not only entry of means, of technical help, but also entry of those volunteers and NGOs who will care for the proper distribution of help."

Around 62,000 people are dead or missing following Cyclone Nargis, which devastated Burma's southern Irawaddy deltay region eleven days ago.

Aid agencies have repeatedly warned that up to two million lives are at risk if food, water and medicine are not delivered to survivors immediately, but Burma's military rulers have continued to reject growing international pressure to accept foreign aid workers, insisting they have the relief effort under control.

"The nation does not need skilled relief workers yet," Vice Admiral Soe Thein told a state-run newspaper.

He said survivors' needs "have been fulfilled to an extent".

However, German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said: "The junta is little by little, in a hesitant way, giving ground but it's crucial to be able to get to people in the delta."

"Every hour, every day, counts," she told reporters.

EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel was to fly to Thailand after the meeting, in the hope of travelling on to Burma to convince the country's generals that foreign aid would be provided without attached conditions.

British international development minister Douglas Alexander has called the situation in Burma "a natural disaster that now threatens to become a man-made catastrophe".

He said he hoped the EU ministers could "make clear to the Burmese regime that we want to see unfettered access for international agencies to provide support that is so desperately needed by the people of Burma at this time."

Strong language from UN chief
Earlier, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon used what analysts called unusually strong language in criticising the junta, insisting that aid experts be admitted immediately.

"I want to register my deep concern and immense frustration on the unacceptably slow response to this grave humanitarian crisis," he told a news conference at UN headquarters in New York.

"We are at a critical point. Unless more aid gets into the country very quickly, we face an outbreak of infectious diseases that could dwarf today's current crisis," he said.

"I therefore call in the most strenuous terms on the government of Myanmar to put its people's lives first. It must do all it can to prevent this disaster from becoming even more serious."

More aid on the way
Some aid has arrived in Burma from India, Thailand, Vietnam and China, and the US has been given permission to send in two additional military cargo planes loaded with supplies.

On Tuesday, a Royal Australian Air Force aircraft carrying water purification tablets, blankets, tarpaulins and medicine was also allowed to land in Burma.

But eleven days after the cyclone, thousands of people are lining the roads on the route between the main city Rangoon and the delta region, begging for food and water.

Health experts say survivors face huge challenges, from hunger and dehydradtion, to dysentery and pneumonia.

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