May

19

Hopes for Myanmar cyclone aid rise as ASEAN meets

Filed Under Natural Disasters | Posted By Jennifer Sullivan | Leave a Comment

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mayan.jpgHopes of a deal to expedite aid to millions of Myanmar cyclone victims rose on Monday as the U.N. stated Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon would visit this week and Southeast Asia kicked off its own disaster-response meeting.

Ban’s trip is likely to conclude in a rare tete-a-tete with junta supremo Than Shwe, who has refused to respond phone calls from the United Nations boss ever since Cyclone Nargis struck two weeks ago, leaving 134,000 dead and missing and up to 2.5 million destitute.

The U.N. also needs a conference in Bangkok on May 24 to assemble funds for the relief effort in the former Burma, where the military government has so far declined to admit large-scale foreign aid for fear it will loosen its 46-year grip on power.

Humanitarian agencies say the death toll from Nargis, already one of the most devastating cyclones to hit Asia, could rise without a immense raise of emergency food, shelter and medicine to the worst-hit Irrawaddy delta.

Non-government aid organisation Save the Children stated in a Sunday statement its research had found some “30,000 children under the age of five in the cyclone-affected Irrawaddy Delta were already intensely malnourished prior to the cyclone hit.”

“Of those, Save the Children believes that several thousand are endangered of death in the next two to three weeks due to lack of food.”

However, Britain’s Asia minister, Mark Malloch-Brown, told Reuters in Yangon on Sunday that diplomats may have turned the corner in brokering a deal to get aid flowing which accommodated the generals’ deep distrust of the outside world — and in particular the West.

“Like all turning points in Burma, the corner will have a few ‘S’ bends in it,” Malloch-Brown stated after a series of meetings with top junta officials.

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May

13

Myanmar Junta Pressed by UN,India, U.S. to Take Aid

Filed Under World News | Posted By Jennifer Sullivan | Leave a Comment

12myanmarxlarge2.jpgThe United Nations, U.S. and India told Myanmar’s military rulers to allow international aid to reach the country, where more than 1.5 million people need help after Tropical Cyclone Nargis struck 10 days ago.

As many as 100,000 people may have died in the disaster, according to UN officials. The death toll reached 33,416 people with 29,770 missing, Myanmar’s state radio announced late yesterday, according to China’s Xinhua News Agency. Continue reading…



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