West urges Myanmar to act on crucial aid

YANGON (Reuters) - Heavy rains pelted homeless cyclonesurvivors in Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta on Tuesday, complicatingthe already slow delivery of aid to more than 1.5 millionpeople facing hunger and disease.

As more foreign aid trickled into the former Burma, criticsratcheted up the pressure on its military rulers to acceleratea relief effort that is only delivering an estimated tenth ofthe supplies needed in the devastated delta.

In Brussels, the European Union called on the militaryjunta to allow in aid workers to help victims to avert "an evengreater tragedy", and France urged U.N. action if the junta didnot cooperate.

The United Nations says more than 1.5 million people arestruggling to survive and up to 100,000 are dead or missingafter cyclone Nargis hit and Spain said on Tuesday that failureto allow aid in could amount to a crime against humanity.

U.N. spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva that it wasalso vital to secure the means to deliver aid.

"We need a kind of air bridge or sea bridge, and huge means(just) as the aid delivery we did in the tsunami, it is thesame kind of logistical operation," said Byrs, of the U.N.Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The government has accepted aid from the outside world butthe help has only trickled in as the rulers have largely barredforeign teams.

"The response of the regime in Burma to this crisis hasbeen absolutely callous and those paying the price of thiscallousness have been the long-suffering Burmese people,"Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told parliament.

In a statement after emergency talks on Myanmar inBrussels, EU development ministers called on Yangon "to offerfree and unfettered access to international humanitarianexperts, including the expeditious delivery of visa and travelpermits".

The EU ministers stopped short of endorsing a French callto deliver aid if necessary without the junta's permission.

France's junior minister for human rights said it had thebacking of Britain and Germany to call on the U.N. SecurityCouncil for aid to be taken into Myanmar without thegovernment's green light if necessary.

"We have called for the 'responsibility to protect' to beapplied in the case of Burma," Rama Yade told reporters.

British officials said London would welcome discussion ofthe responsibility to protect but did not consider the proposalrealistic at present given Russian and Chinese objections.

An Australian air force plane landed in Yangon, Myanmar'smain city, with 31 tonnes of emergency supplies, a day afterthe first U.S. military aid flight arrived in a countryWashington has described as an "outpost of tyranny".

Two more U.S. flights arrived on Tuesday as part of a"confidence building" effort to prod Myanmar's reclusivegenerals into allowing a larger international relief operation11 days after the disaster.

DISEASE THREAT

Tens of thousands of people throughout the delta arecrammed into Buddhist monasteries and schools after arriving intowns that were poor even before the disaster.

Lacking food, water and sanitation, they face the threat ofdiseases such as cholera. Heavy rains added to their misery.

"Where I am now there's over 10,000 homeless people andit's pouring rain," Bridget Gardener of the International RedCross said during a rare tour of the delta by a foreign aidofficial.

While a steady stream of aid flights have landed in Yangon,only a fraction of the relief needed is getting to the deltadue to flooding and the junta's desire to keep most foreign aidand logistics experts either out of the country or in Yangon.

The World Food Programme said it was able to deliver lessthan 20 percent of the 375 tonnes of food a day it wanted tomove into the flooded delta.

Myanmar state television said six ships carrying 500 tonnesof supplies had left Yangon for the delta on Tuesday.

International relief organisations say their local staffare stretched to breaking point, while Medicins Sans Frontieressaid its workers faced "increasing constraints".

The junta has welcomed "aid from any nation" but has madeit very clear it does not want outsiders distributing it.

At the United Nations in New York, Secretary-General BanKi-moon delivered his most critical comments to date.

"I want to register my deep concern -- and immensefrustration -- at the unacceptably slow response to this gravehumanitarian crisis," he told reporters on Monday.

(Additional reporting by Carmel Crimmins in Bangkok; DavidBrunnstrom and Ingrid Melander in Brussels; Writing by PeterMillership; Editing by Stephen Weeks)