Southeast Asian nations will take the lead in an international aid effort for cyclone-hit Burma, but the military junta will not give Western relief workers unfettered access to disaster areas, Singapore said today.
"We will establish a mechanism so that aid from all over the world can flow into Burma," Singapore's Foreign Minister George Yeo said.
Survivors of Cyclone Nargis rush to get first in line to receive aid from a local donor at a monastery
He was speaking after hosting a regional meeting to prod the generals to accept large-scale foreign aid and expertise for up to 2.4 million people left destitute by Cyclone Nargis.
The details were to be worked out with the United Nations, as well as a proposed donor conference to be held in the cyclone-hit former capital, Yangon, on May 25th, the ASEAN foreign ministers said in a joint statement.
They said Burma had agreed to accept 30 medical personnel from each of its neighbours in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Aid workers from outside ASEAN will only be granted visas on a case-by-case basis.
Several medical teams from ASEAN and other Asian countries are already in Burma.
"We have to look at specific needs -- there will not be uncontrolled access," Yeo said after the meeting attended by the Burmese Foreign Minister Nyan Win.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was due to fly to Yangon this week to tour the hardest-hit Irrawaddy Delta and may have a rare face-to-face meeting with junta supremo Than Shwe, who refused to take a call from Ban after the disaster which left 134,000 dead or missing.
The UN had previously planned a donor conference in Bangkok to marshal funds for the relief effort in Burma, which told the Singapore meeting the cyclone caused $10 billion in damage.
A U.N. official said late today that planning for the conference was still fluid.
Humanitarian agencies say the death toll from Nargis, already one of the most devastating cyclones to hit Asia, could soar without a massive increase of emergency food, water, shelter and medicine to the Irrawaddy Delta.
While aid has been trickling into the delta, the U.N.'s World Food Programme (WFP) says it has managed to get rice and beans to just 250,000 of the 750,000 people it thinks are most in need.
However, analysts are making much of the reclusive Than Shwe's first appearance since the disaster in Yangon, the city he deserted in 2005 for a remote new capital 250 miles (390 km) to the north.
On Sunday, state television showed the bespectacled 74-year-old Senior General in the cyclone-hit city meeting ministers involved in the rescue effort and touring some damaged areas.
Today, state television announced a three-day mourning period for cyclone victims, beginning on Tuesday.
The UN's Ban was likely to land in Yangon on Wednesday evening and travel to the Irrawaddy Delta, his spokeswoman said.
Meanwhile the UN's chief humanitarian officer, John Holmes, began a government tour of the delta today after flying in on Sunday night, officials said.
He is expected to meet Prime Minister Thein Sein on Tuesday and deliver a message from Ban to the generals.
The United States and France have naval ships equipped with aid supplies and helicopters waiting in international waters off the Burma coast, although Paris and Washington say they will not go in with the green light from the generals.