BURMA:THE UN reacted furiously last night after Burma's military government confiscated food aid intended for more than a million victims of last week's cyclone.
Two planeloads of UN emergency assistance were impounded by the junta, prompting a temporary suspension in deliveries. UN food aid flights were resumed last night in the hope that negotiations with the junta would lead to a resolution.
The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, called the Burmese action "utterly unacceptable". But he stopped short of joining France and the US in calling for aid deliveries without Burmese permission, although pressure within his government for such a radical move is growing.
Britain's ambassador to Burma, Mark Canning, said authoritative estimates of the numbers of dead and missing ranged between 63,000 and 100,000, and up to 1.9 million were now vulnerable to water-borne disease, hunger and lack of drinkable water.
"So you can do the maths and you will see how quickly this thing can get larger," Mr Canning said. Small amounts of aid were trickling through, he added, but not nearly enough.
The Save the Children charity estimated that one-tenth of the victims made homeless by Cyclone Nargis last Saturday had been reached by yesterday when aid deliveries were halted. Seven tonnes of high-energy biscuits flown in on a Thai commercial flight last Thursday were cleared by Burmese customs but the next two loads, 38 tonnes of relief, enough to feed 95,000 people, were seized by the government.
"All of the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated," Paul Risley, a spokesman for the UN's World Food Programme, said in Bangkok. The regime was also blocking the issue of visas to aid workers.
"The frustration caused by what appears to be a paperwork delay is unprecedented in modern humanitarian relief efforts," Mr Risley said. "It's astonishing." The confiscation of the food came after a Burmese foreign ministry statement said the regime would accept cash and material aid but not international aid workers; the government would distribute food aid.
Britain is continuing to put diplomatic pressure on Burma, principally through China, India and Thailand. But if that failed in the next few days, it would look again at unilateral aid delivery. "If it comes to letting hundreds of thousands of people die, of course we're not going to do that," a British official said.
"There are people suffering in Burma, there are children going without food, there are people without shelter," the prime minister told Sky Television. "It is utterly unacceptable that, when international aid is offered, the regime will try to prevent that getting in." The row over food deliveries came after another standoff between the Burmese junta and the UN over efforts to get visas for up to 40 key disaster management experts. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, has appealed to the Burmese to relent and also criticised the government's decision to press ahead today with a referendum that would strengthen the generals' grip on power, in areas of the country not directly hit by the cyclone.
Eric John, US ambassador to Thailand, said: "If you have a large amount of assistance to be dropped on the tarmac in Rangoon you need to have an onward distribution network. Burma doesn't have that." - (Guardian service)