French aid ship awaits Myanmar permission

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- A French navy ship approached Myanmar's cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy delta Saturday, but was still awaiting permission from the ruling military regime to dock and unload 1,500 tons of aid.

The junta said Friday that the official death toll from the storm has nearly doubled to 78,000 with 55,917 missing. Aid groups have said the toll is probably about 128,000, with many more deaths possible from disease and starvation unless help is provided quickly to some 2.5 million survivors.

But despite possessing little means to deliver aid quickly and efficiently, the isolationist government of Myanmar -- one of the poorest countries in the world -- insists it does not want international aid groups to manage the relief operations. It says all foreign aid must be delivered to the government, which will distribute it further.

French defense and foreign ministry officials said the FSS Mistral, carrying 1,500 tons of food and medication, was expected reach Myanmar "sometime Saturday." They said the French government was "still in negotiations," even though the junta has so far refused to give authorization for it to dock, either in the delta or in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon.

France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said late Friday that "as of today the government of Myanmar refused" to let the ship in. He said the Myanmar government asked the French to airlift the material through Yangon, "which of course is a nonsense," he said.

He warned that the government's refusal to allow aid to be delivered to people "could lead to a true crime against humanity."

"We have small boats which could allow us to go through the delta to most of the regions where no one has accessed yet," he said. "We have small helicopters to drop food, and we have doctors."

In Yangon, news of the approach of the French ship created an excited buzz among residents who were phoning each other to ask how far the ship was and when it would arrive.

The excitement reflected the frustrations felt by many of Myanmar's people, who have watched their government reject international help every day despite pleas by the United Nations, foreign governments and aid agencies.

"More than two weeks after the event, we are at a critical point," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "Unless more aid gets into the country -- quickly -- we face the risk of an outbreak of infectious diseases that could dramatically worsen today's crisis."

Myanmar's junta, meanwhile, kept a tight lid on information. It put up a security cordon around Yangon to restrict foreign aid workers from going to the Irrawaddy delta, where scenes of devastation were rife and corpses were rotting where they died.

A small tour to the disaster zone was being arranged Saturday for diplomats to give them their first up-close look at the effects of the cyclone and at the highly criticized relief delivery effort by the government.

John Holmes, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, was going to Myanmar on Sunday to try to convince junta leaders to grant more access to U.N. relief workers and to massively scale up aid efforts, said Amanda Pitt, a U.N. spokeswoman in Bangkok, the capital of neighboring Thailand.

"If you look at the situation with China, they have accepted relief and assistance teams from Russia, Taiwan and Japan," Pitt said, referring to the response to the devastating earthquake there. "They know they can't do it on their own."

Two weeks after the tragedy, the U.N. says it was largely in the dark about the situation on the ground in Myanmar.

"We simply don't have the information, and I can't say when we will have it," said Steve Marshall, a U.N. official who just came out of the country.

Lack of clean water will be deadly in the Irrawaddy delta, Thomas Gurtner, the head of operations for the international Red Cross, told The Associated Press in Geneva.

The U.S. military flew four more flights of emergency supplies into Yangon on Friday, raising its total to 17 since Monday. Two of the flights were filled with aid provided by the Thai government. India was also readying flights

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