Myanmar grants more visas to to foreign relief workers

May 29, 2008, 13:58 GMT

Yangon - International organizations have received permission to step up relief operations in Myanmar where an estimated 2 million people are still in need of help, reports said Thursday.

Germany's technical relief organization THW is among several foreign groups allowed to to increase their activities in the Irrawaddy Delta which bore the brunt of cyclone Nargis.

But the relief operation was proving arduous as each trip to the stricken region has to be approved individually by the country's authoritarian military regime.

The United Nations has been demanding the junta open up the country to international relief for victims of the May 2-3 cyclone, which has killed more than 70,000 and left 50,000 missing.

'We are satisfied with the way things are going, taking into account what it is possible for us to do,' said Stephan Mack, the THW operations manager in the commercial centre, Yangon.

Mack said his group was planning to send a second team to the delta region by the weekend to where they will concentrate mainly on installing water purification equipment.

The decision by the junta to open up the country to foreign relief groups, followed an appeal by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The UN estimates more than 2 million people still require assistance.

The military rulers had insisted they could master the crisis on their own and that residents in the stricken area could survive on fish and vegetables grown there.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the former UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, told Britain's BBC that the cycle had helped open a dialogue with the reclusive junta leaders.

Meanwhile, the state-controlled newspaper New Light of Myanmar accused the opposition party of back of Aung San Suu Kyi of using the disaster for political purposes.

It claimed Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy had stopped distributing money to people in need after becoming embroiled in a confrontation with the authorities.

Earlier this week, the authorities imposed a six-month extension of the house arrest of opposition leader, who has been under continual house arrest for the past five years.