UN chief Ban Ki-moon took "a message of hope" to Burma's cyclone victims today and pressed the military government to allow large-scale international aid for the 2.4 million people left destitute.
The UN Secretary-General was driven down an avenue in Yangon lined with trees uprooted by the cyclone, where workers were still shoveling debris into trucks three weeks after the storm left nearly 134,000 dead or missing.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon talks with Burma Foreign Minister U Nyan Win after arriving in the country today
"I'm quite confident we will be able to overcome this tragedy," Ban told the trustees of the Shwedagon Pagoda, the Buddhist country's most sacred site. "I've tried to bring a message of hope to your people.
"At the same time, I hope your people and government can coordinate the flow of aid so the aid work can be done in a more systematic and organized way."
Ban has said relief teams had been able to reach only a quarter of those in need after one of Asia's worst cyclones in decades destroyed entire villages in the Irrawaddy Delta.
He signed a book of condolences at the Foreign Ministry and later boarded a helicopter to view stricken areas of the delta, southwest of the former capital.
Ban aims to convince the generals to accept more foreign expertise to distribute aid and to support a joint United Nations and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) donor-pledging conference in Yangon on Sunday.
However, countries will be reluctant to commit money until they are allowed to assess the damage for themselves.
"The shared concern is we don't know the extent of the damage. We don't know the number of the dead, the number of the missing or the number of the displaced," ASEAN Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan told reporters in Bangkok.
Ban's visit was the talk of the town for people desperate for political change after 46 years of harsh military rule. But deep down they accepted that the visit would not stray from its humanitarian mission.
"I don't think we can expect much out of his visit because the UN has not been able to influence the regime at all concerning our situation," lawyer Nyunt Aung said.
The generals' normal distrust of outsiders is even greater after worldwide outrage and heightened sanctions imposed after the army's crackdown on pro-democracy protests last September.
Sunday's conference coincides with the expiry of the latest year-long detention order on opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. But nobody expects her to be released from five years of house arrest.
Ban was to meet Senior General Than Shwe on Friday in Naypyidaw, a new capital 250 miles north of Yangon, where the junta lives in isolation from the rest of the country.
The government wants more than $11 billion in aid, but international donors need access to verify the needs, ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said.
In the Thai capital, Bangkok, relief workers who have been denied visas for weeks were careful at a news conference not to criticise the government at a delicate stage.
"We have to walk a fine balance between getting assistance to people, maintaining our humanitarian independence, and liaising with the government. The challenges are very huge," said Richard Rumsey of the Christian aid group World Vision.
The government has allowed planes to land from several countries carrying emergency supplies, including some from the United States, its fiercest critic, but has been reluctant to allow more foreign experts into the disaster zone.
The first of 10 helicopters granted permission by the government to airlift supplies into the delta arrived in Yangon on Thursday, the U.N. World Food Programme said.
However, the government continues to spurn offers from French and US Navy ships to deliver assistance to survivors.
Underlining the junta's deep suspicion of outsiders, official media say that "strings attached" were unacceptable, without specifying what the strings are.
Nevertheless, Washington said its ships would stay for now.
European Union lawmakers kept up pressure on Burma's military by calling for a vote in the European Parliament urging the UN Security Council to consider whether forced aid shipments were possible. The parliament has no legal power over the bloc's foreign policy, but can help shape opinion.