Myanmar mourns 134,000 dead

Myanmar mourns 134,000 dead
21 May 2008, 0340 hrs IST,REUTERS

YANGON: Myanmar started three days of mourning on Tuesday for the 134,000 dead and missing from Cyclone Nargis as diplomats pressed the reclusive generals to speed up aid to 2.4 million survivors.

Flags would fly at half mast until Thursday, state television said a day after the first appearance in the disaster zone by junta supremo Than Shwe, who left Yangon for a new capital 250 miles to the north in 2005.

The bespectacled 75-year-old senior general was shown touring storm-hit parts of Yangon on Sunday and the Irrawaddy Delta on Monday, fuelling speculation that after two weeks, the leadership has woken up to the scale of the disaster.

"It is not insignificant that he has been forced out of his lair," a Yangon-based diplomat said. "There are obviously some in the military who see how enormous this is, and how enormously wrong it could go without further support."

Aid experts say massive foreign assistance, ideally on the scale of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami aid effort, is needed to prevent the death toll from hunger and disease soaring. The onset of the monsoon season in the Irrawaddy Delta is making life even more miserable for those clinging to survival. Daily downpours are making it hard to salvage what little stores of rice escaped the storm's initial wrath.

"Our rice could recover if the sun ever got the chance to shine," one weather-beaten farmer said in a delta village. "But it will never be good quality again."

The junta has accepted foreign aid flights, including some from the US military, into Yangon and allowed UN agencies to distribute supplies. However, it has been loathe to let foreign aid teams into the delta for fear the presence of outsiders might threaten the military's 46-year grip on power.

Checkpoints have been set up on roads. Soldiers and police are searching vehicles, taking down license plates, and asking "Are you all Burmese?" However, the diplomatic wheels are starting to turn, raising hopes that experts adept at establishing networks to distribute aid may finally be able to help.