By MICHAEL CASEY,AP
Posted: 2008-05-09 14:39:54

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - With only a few aging helicopters and little disaster experience, Myanmar’s junta is risking the lives of millions of cyclone victims by running a massive relief operation alone, aid experts said Friday.

Since Cyclone Nargis struck almost a week ago, few of the estimated 1.9 million survivors in the country’s flooded Irrawaddy Delta have received any assistance and aid agencies fear that many will start dying of disease.

The military government seized U.N. aid shipments Friday and continued to block entry of many emergency relief experts from international agencies and foreign governments. The junta said it would distribute the aid itself.

Few countries have the capability to deal with a disaster of this magnitude, a fact that is only magnified in a country like Myanmar, which is one of the poorest in Asia.

The government has spent the bulk of its money on building up the 400,000-strong military - at the expense of almost everything else in the country - and lacks even the most basic equipment for a relief effort.

Andrew Brookes, an aerospace specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, an independent think tank, estimates that the country only has 15 transport planes and fewer than 40 helicopters. The planes, he said, are not capable of carrying tons of food while many of the helicopters are not operational.

“Even if they (the helicopters) were all serviceable, it’s not even a drop in the ocean,” Brookes said. “The task is so awesome. It would faze even a sophisticated force like the British, French or Germans.”

Foreign aid agencies and governments, many of which have applied but have yet to receive visas for their workers, argue they can bring years if not decades of experience from managing past disasters like the 2004 tsunami and the Pakistan earthquake in 2005.

They have the helicopters, cargo planes and trucks to quickly deliver supplies, the expertise to reach survivors in the most inhospitable situations and the ability to avert humanitarian crises like disease outbreaks and starvation.

“As we know, the first two weeks are crucial. Speed is crucial,” said Sarah Ireland, a regional director for the aid agency Oxfam, which has yet to receive permission to join the relief effort.

“The government of Myanmar can draw on huge amounts of experience, goodwill and resources to help in this effort,” Ireland said. “Whilst we understand concerns the government might have, we would urge them to listen to organizations like us.”

Christiane Berthiaume, spokeswoman for the World Food Program, agreed aid agencies are an integral part of any relief effort.

“We always work with NGOs, especially in emergencies, because to do distribution you need expertise,” Berthiaume said. “You need people who know how to do the job. When it’s a situation of life or death, you have no time for training.”

Others contend that handing over relief supplies to the government - especially one as secretive as in Myanmar - without outside oversight could result in assistance being diverted to junta supporters or lost to corruption. Myanmar ranks with North Korea and Zimbabwe as one of the world’s most isolated countries, and the regime is both unaccountable to its own people and suspicious of any foreign influence.

So far, those arguments to allow experts and equipment into the country have fallen on deaf ears.

In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, government spokesman Ye Htut said the junta was already conducting relief operations “systematically and orderly” and saw no need for outside assistance beyond donations of cash and relief supplies.

“Myanmar has prioritized receiving emergency relief provisions and is making strenuous efforts to transport those provisions without delay by its own labor to the affected areas,” Ye Htut said.

The government hammered home that point Friday, when it seized 38 tons of high-energy biscuits from two WFP flights that had just landed in Yangon. The biscuits were enough to feed 95,000 people.

That prompted the U.N. agency to say it would temporarily halt relief flights. Later, WFP chief spokeswoman Nancy Roman said flights would resume on Saturday while negotiations continued for the release of the supplies.

The frustration was evident in the voice of Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Myanmar, who met with Myanmar Deputy Foreign Minister Kyaw Thu on Friday. She came away without a commitment to allow American relief teams into the country, saying that the government “was not ready,” to accept the help.

“I’m bewildered,” Villarosa told The Associated Press. “None of this makes any sense.”

Associated Press writer Alexander G. Higgins in Geneva contributed to this report.