Desperation Mounts in Myanmar

Desperation among Myanmar's 1.5 million cyclone survivorsmounted as the international aid flow remained a trickle and policebarred foreign aid workers from worst-hit areas.

The United Nations and Western powers piled more pressure on themilitary regime to speed up its slow and disorganised response tothe disaster by suggesting that helpless victims could have beenrobbed of food and other urgent supplies.

The reports were unconfirmed, but the relief effort - furthercomplicated by heavy rains - is only delivering one tenth of thesupplies needed in the devastated delta region, where up to 100,000people are dead or missing.

"It's just awful, people are in just desperate need, begging asvehicles go past," Gordon Bacon, an emergency co-ordinator forInternational Rescue Committee, told Reuters by phone fromYangon.

The international community has flown in tonnes of medicine,food and shelter materials, but getting it to low-lying delta areahas been complicated by poor equipment, bad weather and governmentintransigence.

Myanmar's reclusive junta has also made it very clear it doesnot want outsiders distributing aid.

Foreign experts in sanitation, nutrition and medicine haveeither been prevented from entering the country formerly known asBurma or are restricted to the main city of Yangon.

Armed police send back foreigners who attempt to pass throughcheckpoints surrounding the former capital.