BURMA:TROPICAL CYCLONE Nargis, which ripped through Burma on Saturday, is the most serious natural disaster to hit the country in decades, causing what one United Nations official described as "catastrophic" damage to the most-densely populated areas.
About 10,000 people are believed dead and about one million in need of emergency shelter and drinking water.
In addition, damage caused by the cyclone and flooding in the country's two major rice-growing areas have "potentially serious effects" for food supply in two other impoverished countries, a UN official said yesterday.
World Food Programme spokesman Paul Risley said it was not yet known whether Burma could meet its commitments to supply tens of thousands of tonnes of rice to Sri Lanka and neighbouring Bangladesh.
In the Burmese capital Rangoon, an official said the planned shipment of 50,000 tonnes of milled rice to Sri Lanka in May may be delayed as the government needed to check its stocks.
Burma state media said in April the country had exported about 400,000 tonnes of rice in the past year because it had enough supplies to feed its 53 million people.
Mr Risley said it was too early yet to assess the damage to crops in the Irrawaddy delta and Bago division, the main rice-producing regions in Burma.
"These are longer-term questions and a major issue of concern because of the potentially serious effects for food supply in those countries at a time when global supplies are short," he said.
A huge relief, clean-up and repair operation will be required to help Burma recover from the cyclone, say UN officials. Neighbouring Thailand has responded by sending nine tonnes of medicines and food by military transport to Rangoon's international airport, which reopened yesterday.
India, which maintained close relations with the government throughout last year's political crisis, said two navy ships from Port Blair would sail immediately for Rangoon carrying food, tents, blankets, clothing and medicine.
The cyclone has struck at a time when the regime is under intense international pressure to democratise following the widespread suppression of street protests last year. The ruling military junta blamed the protests on foreign interference.
Despite the disaster the junta said yesterday it planned to push ahead with a May 10th referendum on a new constitution, a decision opposition activists condemned as "outrageous".
The state-run Myanmar Ahlin newspaper indicated that the regime would go ahead with a national vote on Saturday on a new charter, which the generals say will lay the foundation for what they call a "discipline-flourishing democracy".
Dissident groups - which say the charter is simply a tool to legitimise military rule - said going ahead with the vote as cyclone survivors struggle to meet their basic needs reflected the generals' indifference to their citizens' suffering.
In Rangoon, where electricity had yet to be restored since the storm, the city's millions of residents were queuing for dwindling, and increasingly expensive, supplies of candles, drinking water and fuel. Many, still seething over the military's violent suppression of last September's anti-government protests, expressed bitterness that the military was doing little to help restore normality.
"People are saying, 'last September they were incredibly efficient at clearing 100,000 people off the street, so why aren't they being as efficient clearing 100,000 trees off the street'," said one Bangkok-based diplomat.
The diplomat warned that the junta was taking a big risk in devoting its resources, and attention, to the referendum at a time when people are in desperate need of relief, and said the move could backfire if popular anger at a slow humanitarian response boils over.
"It is just bizarre that this would be their allocation of logistical resources at a time like this," he said. "It shows that they are out of touch with the scale of the problems facing them."
However, Aung Naing Oo, a Thailand-based political analyst, said the junta might be reluctant to postpone the vote because of concerns that charter critics would have a greater opportunity for their "No vote" campaign. - (Guardian service/Financial Times/Reuters)