Myanmar okays aid worker visas

2008-05-29 10:40

Yangon - Myanmar's isolationist regime has approved all pending visas for UN relief workers to enter the country, the United Nations said on Thursday, nearly a month after a cyclone left more than two million people in need of aid.

Greater numbers of barred foreign aid staffers were also entering the Irrawaddy delta, the low-lying region that took the brunt of the May 2-3 cyclone, the United Nations said in a statement.

"I went to some areas where no international relief personnel had been to, and the priorities for these people are food and shelter. We're going to be working very hard to deliver these items to them," Tony Banbury, regional head of the UN World Food Programme, told AP Television News on Thursday.

Banbury visited a number of villages cut off from the rest of the world on a helicopter tour of the delta Tuesday.

Cyclone Nargis left an estimated 2.4 million people in desperate need of food, shelter and medical care, according to the UN. The government says it killed 78 000 people and left 56 000 missing.

The ruling military, apparently fearing that direct foreign participation in the aid operation could undermine its security, slapped a cordon around the delta for weeks. It only allowed foreign aid workers in after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with junta leader Senior General Than Shwe last weekend.

Since then, the regime appears to have kept its promise to allow humanitarian workers from all countries into the country and allow them access to the delta.

The UN statement said the last 45 pending visas had been granted to its staffers, while Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders and the UN Children's Fund have sent at least 14 workers into the delta in recent days.

- AP