U.S. Plane Arrives to Aid Cyclone Victims

by Jarrett Martineau | May 12, 2008 at 08:54 pm | 154 views | add comment

It's incredibly sad to watch the cyclone disaster unfold in Myanmar, as the world's fears about slow and ineffectual relief efforts, interference by the military government, and the spread of infectious disease fast become realities for people in this ravaged nation.

The first U.S. military aid flight to Myanmar landed in Yangon on Monday but emergency supplies remained at a trickle for 1.5 million people facing hunger and disease in the cyclone-ravaged Irrawaddy delta.

The C-130 military transport plane flew in from an air base in neighboring Thailand carrying water, mosquito nets and blankets as U.S. President George W. Bush condemned Myanmar's military leaders for being either "isolated or callous."

The junta's navy Commander-in-Chief Soe Thein received the U.S. supplies, which were accompanied by Admiral Timothy Keating, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, and Henrietta Fore, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

A stream of other aid flights had already landed in Yangon, but only a fraction of the help needed has got to people in the flooded delta, partly because the junta has kept foreign aid and logistics experts out of the country or in Yangon.

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made clear his exasperation with the junta and its "unacceptably slow" response to Cyclone Nargis since it struck Myanmar on May 3.