UNITED NATIONS - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned Friday that the death toll from Cyclone Nargis will increase dramatically unless Myanmar’s military government allows more aid into the country to help victims at risk of disease.
Ban told the U.N. General Assembly that he was sending U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes this weekend to Myanmar, which is also known as Burma. Holmes is to deliver a third letter attempting to establish contact with the country’s leadership to discuss how the U.N. can assist the government’s immediate and long-term relief effort.
“This morning I saw the latest official figures, which now estimate that 78,000 have died. Countless people are missing,” he said. “This is a very tragic situation. … Estimates of those at risk run as high as 2.5 million people.”
“More than two weeks after the event, we are at a critical point,” Ban warned.
“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. I want to emphasize that this is not the time for politics. Our concern right now is to save lives - to help the government of Myanmar and its people,” he said.
Ban also told representatives of the 192 U.N. member states that he hopes a meeting of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations on May 19 and a high-level pledging conference that he has suggested for May 24-25 will help to mobilize resources in response to the disaster in Myanmar - as was the case in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.
The U.N. released the text of Ban’s briefing to the closed-door meeting.
France’s U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert told reporters afterwards that he intervened after Ban’s speech, saying he was “a little bit surprised” that the secretary-general had stuck “to the idea of convicing the authority of Myanmar to allow more food and more aid into Myanmar.”
“He reported on absolutely no progress in the opening of the access to victims, so I had to make an intervention. I was interrputed after the first sentence by the ambassador of Myanmar who denounced the fact that France was sending … a warship” to Burma, Ripert said.
Ripert said he explained that while the ship was operated by the French Navy, “it’s not a warship, it’s a ship on which we have 1,500 tons of food, drugs, medications. we have small boats which could allow us to go through the delta to most of the regions where no one has accessed yet. We have small helicopters to drop food, and we have doctors.”
“As of today the government of Myanmar refused to the French the authorization of using this ship, and asked to us to convey the material through airlift in Rangoon, which of course is a nonsense,” Ripert said.
“We are still trying to convince the authority of Burma to authorize us to go there,” he said.
“The ship will be in view of the delta, but in the international waters tomorrow (Saturday), and we still hope that they will not refuse that,” Ripert said.
“Hundreds of thousands of lives are in jeopardy and we think that the primary responsibility of the government of Myanmar is to help and open the borders so that the international aid could come into the place,” he said.
Ripert would not say whether France might try to deliver the aid without authorization.
[Extract from and AP news report]