Burma's military leadership ‘will consider’ allowing foreign aid workers to join the relief operation after Cyclone Nargis, the prime minister said today at the opening of a donor conference in Rangoon.
‘For those groups who are interested in rehabilitation and reconstruction, my government is ready to accept them, in accordance with our priorities and the extent of work that needs to be done,’ Prime Minister Thein Sein said.
‘We will consider allowing them if they wish to engage in rehabilitation and reconstruction work, township by township,’ he said, in Burma's first reaction to the UN's announcement on Friday that the junta would let in foreign aid staff.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was ‘very much encouraged’ by the prime minister's remarks at the international donors conference on the cyclone-hit nation, hosted by the UN and southeast Asian nations.
Mr Ban said that Burma - also known as Myanmar - understands the urgency of rushing aid to cyclone survivors, and he hoped the crisis had reached a ‘turning point’.
Mr Ban became the first UN Secretary-General in 44 years to visit Burma on Thursday, and on Friday he said he had convinced junta leader Than Shwe to accept foreign disaster experts.
More than three weeks after the cyclone that left at least 133,000 dead or missing, less than half of the 2.4m people in need of food, shelter and medicine are receiving help, the UN has said.
Meanwhile, democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party has said that donors giving aid to Burma’s junta must pressure the generals on political reform.
The spokesman for the National League for Democracy said that while getting aid to cyclone survivors is crucial, the country’s struggling pro-democracy movement must not be sidelined, and that international donors should put political pressure on the junta.
