UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is to visit Burma this week to discuss the delivery of international aid to the victims of the devastating cyclone.
Mr Ban is due to leave New York on Tuesday and arrive in Burma on Wednesday or Thursday.
Today, John Holmes, the UN's top disaster official, arrived in Burma for talks with the junta about widening the much-criticised relief effort after Cyclone Nargis, which hit more than two weeks ago.
He will hold talks with senior officials of the regime to get them to speed up the effort for 2m cyclone survivors in desperate need of immediate aid.
Mr Holmes is also due to visit the devastated Irrawaddy Delta.
The latest UN emergency report said basic needs were still critical in Burma, where around 2m survivors are lacking food and water.
Cyclone Nargis tore a path of destruction through southwest Burma, also known as Myanmar, earlier this month, leaving nearly 134,000 people dead or missing.
The cyclone destroyed food stocks and rice paddies in the key food producing region, raising fears of a famine in the military-ruled nation.
Fuller access sought
Despite thousands of tonnes of aid being flown in, aid groups want fuller access to help supervise relief in the aftermath of the storm.
The international community has been toughening the rhetoric on the country's military rulers, who are deeply suspicious of the outside world and have limited access to foreigners with expertise in managing disaster zones.
Despite the government's insistence that the relief effort is going well, witnesses who managed to sneak through the security cordon around the hard-hit Irrawaddy Delta said the situation remained dire.
Burma's government has let more foreign experts into the country in recent days to help the survivors who do not have enough food, water or shelter more than two weeks after the storm struck.
However, the junta has continued to insist it can handle most of the relief operation by itself.
A leading aid group has warned that thousands of children in cyclone-ravaged Burma could starve to death within weeks unless emergency food supplies reach them soon.
Save the Children said that the youngsters in the affected areas are now suffering from severe acute malnourishment.
As many as 40% of the needy are believed to be children, and aid workers have become increasingly frustrated by the Burmese regime's restrictions on the relief operation.
Aid agencies are hoping that Mr Holmes will have some sway on the regime, which keeps an iron grip on one of the poorest and most isolated nations on the planet.
Aid groups say the government cannot possibly handle the tragedy alone, with hundreds of tonnes of supplies and high-tech equipment piling up in warehouses, bottle-necked by logistics and other problems.
