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Myanmar blocks UN emergency aid
LAST UPDATE: Friday, 9 May 2008 - 12:14:15 AM
YANGON: Myanmar's isolationist regime blocked United Nations efforts on Thursday to airlift urgently needed high-energy biscuits to survivors of a cyclone that may have killed more than 100,000 people, UN officials said.
Paul Risley, a spokesman of the UN's World Food Program in Bangkok, said three flights were waiting to take off from Dubai, Dhaka and Thailand with 50 tonnes of biscuits. A fourth shipment aboard a scheduled Thai Airways cargo flight was likely to bring some biscuits later Thursday.
He told that the WFP was in ''constant touch'' with the military junta to obtain the flight clearance for the first major airlift of international aid, but there has been no word from officials.
Earlier, a statement from WFP in Washington indicated that a green light for the airlift had been given, saying the planes were scheduled to land in Yangon early Thursday.
Myanmar's generals, traditionally paranoid about foreign influence, issued an appeal for international assistance after the deadly storm struck Saturday. But they have since dragged their feet on issuing visas to relief workers even as survivors face hunger, disease and flooding in the hardest hit Irrawaddy delta.
A handful of smaller shipments from neighboring countries arrived earlier in the week.
Myanmar's state media said Cyclone Nargis has killed at least 22,980 people and left 42,119 missing, but a top US diplomat said on Wednesday that more than 100,000 may have perished.
''We are in constant discussion with them in Yangon, and we expect to receive clearance,'' Risley said.
''It is enough of a challenge that visas are being held up for bringing in experience international relief workers, but it is specially frustrating that critically needed food aid is being held up,'' he said.
Myanmar's state television on Thursday showed Prime Minister Lt Gen Thein Sein distributing food packages to the sick and injured in the delta and soldiers dropping food over villages. The date of the distributions was not given.
Indian navy vessels and planes from Japan, Thailand, Singapore and Laos and Bangladesh had arrived in recent days with medicine, candles, instant noodles, raincoats and other relief supplies, the television said.
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