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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| U.N. to Resume Aid to Myanmar After Dispute With Generals |
| 2008-05-10 |
| The military leaders of Myanmar seized a shipment of United Nations food aid on Friday intended for victims of a devastating cyclone, declaring that they would accept donations of food and medicine but not the experienced aid workers international groups say are in equally short supply there. The ruling junta continued to permit a small number of aid deliveries and promised to allow the first air shipment from the Pentagon. But the refusal of the countryÂ’s iron-fisted rulers to allow doctors and disaster relief experts to enter in large numbers contributed the growing concern that starvation and epidemic diseases could end up killing people on the same scale as the winds, waves and flooding that destroyed villages across a wide swath of coastal Myanmar nearly a week ago. The International Red Cross estimated on Friday that the combined efforts of relief agencies and the Myanmar government has distributed aid to only 220,000 of up to 1.9 million people left homeless, injured or subject to disease and hunger after the storm. "There are problems to get the aid inside, and there are problems to get the aid out to the delta area," the Danish Red Cross director, Anders Ladekarl, said in a satellite telephone interview from Myanmar to Danish broadcaster DR. "We are simply lacking transportation. There are almost no boats and no helicopters. This is really a nightmare to make this operation run." |
| Posted by:Fred |