BURMA:AID DONORS pledged tens of millions of dollars to Burma's cyclone relief effort yesterday, but many countries said offers of support were conditional on international access to the devastated Irrawaddy delta.
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, struck an upbeat note last night, saying that Burma was "moving fast in the right direction" at the end of a day-long international donor conference.
The UN chief said he was confident the Burmese regime would honour its commitment to allow international aid and aid workers into the affected region.
But many countries represented at the conference attended by 500 delegates expressed concern that the regime would continue to put obstacles in the path of international assistance.
Several diplomats, representing countries including Denmark and Sweden, signalled that they might be unwilling to commit funds for the relief effort for the 2.4 million people affected until international aid workers are given the opportunity to verify the full scale of the disaster.
"The Burmese government is naive - it's a Stalinist regime," said one western aid worker. "At the conference it gets some pledges. Then it does nothing."
In a series of presentations at the conference, Burmese authorities were precise about the livestock lost - 1,250,194 chickens and 136,804 buffaloes - but have yet to pin down the number of people who died, estimated at 134,000.
The Burmese prime minister, Lieut Gen Thein Sein, told delegates yesterday that international aid "without strings" was welcome.
- (Guardian service)