Xenophobic Junta says ‘No’ to US Navy

US says Navy ships will leave Myanmar area after failing to get OK to help in relief efforts

The Associated Press

Published: June 4, 2008

 

YANGON, Myanmar: The U.S. military Wednesday ordered navy ships loaded with relief aid off Myanmar’s coast to leave the area after the country’s xenophobic junta refused to give them permission to help survivors of last month’s devastating cyclone.

Adm. Timothy Keating, the top commander in the Pacific, ordered the USS Essex and accompanying vessels to depart the Myanmar area after what he said were 15 separate attempts in recent weeks to get the junta’s authorization to help with relief efforts.

Myanmar’s state media has said it feared a U.S. invasion aimed at seizing the country’s oil deposits.

The ruling generals also have forbidden the use of military helicopters from friendly neighboring nations, which are vital in rushing supplies to isolated survivors. This has forced aid agencies to scour for civilian aircraft around the world, and bring them in at dramatically increasing costs.

Speaking in Hawaii, Keating said the U.S. unsuccessfully tried to persuade Myanmar’s leaders to allow ships, helicopters and landing craft in to provide additional disaster relief.

The ships were in the region for international exercises. Keating made them available to help with relief efforts for last month’s cyclone, and they were deployed near Myanmar in case they obtained permission to enter the country’s waters.

But Myanmar allowed only limited U.S. military aid flights to the country, and barred the ships from approaching.

Paul Risley, a spokesman for the U.S. World Food Program in Bangkok, Thailand, warned Tuesday the logistical aspects of the relief operations, such as the chartering of helicopters, were causing expenses to soar.

In previous large scale disasters — such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and Pakistan’s 2005 earthquake — military helicopters were used to meet the massive emergency’s immediate requirements, he said. Thailand and Singapore have many helicopters on hand, he said.

“For political reasons, the Myanmar government was reluctant to approve their use,” Risley said. Myanmar was reportedly able to field only seven helicopters of its own.

In a report circulated Tuesday, the United Nations said more survivors were now receiving some assistance, although in many cases it didn’t meet essential needs.

A total of 1.3 million survivors have been reached with assistance by local and international humanitarian groups, the Red Cross and the U.N., said the U.N’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in a situation report dated June 2.

It said in Myanmar’s Irrawaddy delta, the area hardest hit by Cyclone Nargis, the proportion of people reached with assistance had increased to 49 percent from 23 percent on May 25.

However, the report warned, “There remains a serious lack of sufficient and sustained humanitarian assistance for the affected populations.

In one effort to reach survivors, the U.S.-based Mercy Corps sent the first of a fleet of barges into the delta where many areas are only accessible by water.

The barge, bound for the hard-hit town of Laputta, carried emergency supplies and items to jump-start a “cash-for-work” recovery program, which was used after the tsunami in Indonesia, a release from the group said.

The U.N. has estimated that 2.4 million people are in need of food, shelter or medical care as a result of the storm, which the government said killed 78,000 people and left another 56,000 missing.

The junta had promised U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that foreign relief workers would be allowed into areas worst affected by the storm in the Irrawaddy delta after they were initially barred.

After Ban won Myanmar’s agreement to allow in helicopters to work for WFP, the U.N. agency was compelled to charter 10 privately owned military-grade helicopters: one from nearby Malaysia, and the others from Ukraine, Uganda and South Africa.

The helicopters had to be shipped to Bangkok aboard huge cargo planes. The Canadian government arranged commercially chartered flights to have four helicopters hauled from Ukraine, and an Australian air force plane transported two from South Africa. But a Russian plane had to be chartered to carry the three others from Uganda, at a cost of “roughly US$1 million,” said Risley.

WFP must also pay for each hour the helicopters are used, plus associated costs for pilots and ground crew, meaning “expenses can rise very rapidly,” he said.