Myanmar mourns cyclone dead as aid pressure grows

YANGON (Reuters) - Army-ruled Myanmar started three days ofmourning on Tuesday for the 134,000 dead and missing fromCyclone Nargis as diplomats pressed the reclusive generals tospeed up aid to 2.4 million survivors.

Flags would fly at half mast until Thursday, statetelevision said a day after the first appearance in thedisaster zone by junta supremo Than Shwe, who left Yangon for anew capital 250 miles (390 km) to the north in 2005.

The bespectacled 75-year-old Senior General was showntouring storm-hit parts of Yangon on Sunday and the IrrawaddyDelta on Monday, fuelling speculation that after two weeks, theleadership has woken up to the scale of the disaster, one ofAsia's most devastating cyclones.

"It is not insignificant that he has been forced out of hislair," one Yangon-based diplomat said. "There are obviouslysome in the military who see how enormous this is, and howenormously wrong it could go without further support."

Aid experts say massive foreign assistance, ideally on thescale of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami aid effort, is needed toprevent the death toll from hunger and disease soaring.

The onset of the monsoon season in the Irrawaddy Delta ismaking life even more miserable for those clinging to survivalafter Nargis' winds and sea surge ravaged the area.

Daily downpours are making it hard to salvage what littlestores of rice escaped the storm's initial wrath.

"Our rice could recover if the sun ever got the chance toshine," one weather-beaten farmer said in a delta village. "Butit will never be good quality again."

DIPLOMATIC WHEELS TURNING

The junta has accepted foreign aid flights, including somefrom the U.S. military, into Yangon and allowed U.N. agenciessuch as the World Food Programme to distribute supplies.

However, it has been loathe to let foreign aid teams intothe delta for fear the presence of outsiders might threaten themilitary's 46-year grip on power.

Checkpoints have been set up on roads leading into thedelta. Soldiers and police are searching vehicles, taking downlicence plates, and asking "Are you all Burmese? Are there anyforeigners?"

However, the diplomatic wheels are starting to turn,raising hopes that experts adept at establishing networks todistribute aid may finally be able to help.

At an emergency disaster response meeting in Singapore onMonday, the Association of South East Asian Nations of whichMyanmar is a member, said it would coordinate the aid effortand set up a "mechanism" for more supplies.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is also set tofly in on Wednesday to try to convince the generals it is intheir interests to open up and put aside pride and paranoia.

"His objective is to reinforce the ongoing aid operation,see how the international relief and rehabilitation effort canbe scaled up and work with Myanmar authorities to significantlyincrease the amount of aid," his spokeswoman Michele Montassaid.

Details of ASEAN's plan and its relief "task force" arestill sketchy, although the 10-nation group and the UnitedNations announced in a joint statement that they would convenea donor conference in Yangon on May 25.

Myanmar had also agreed to accept nearly 300 medicalpersonnel from its neighbours to supplement the few outsideteams of doctors already admitted, ASEAN said.

"We have to look at specific needs. There will not beuncontrolled access," Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeosaid.

The U.N.'s chief humanitarian officer, John Holmes, isexpected to meet Prime Minister Thein Sein on Tuesday todeliver a message from Ban to the generals. Holmes visited thedevastated delta towns of Labutta and Bogalay on Monday.

AID NEEDS

While aid has been trickling into the delta, the World FoodProgramme says it has managed to get rice, beans and biscuitsto just 250,000 of the 750,000 people it thinks are most inneed.

Britain's Asia minister Mark Malloch-Brown said afterreturning from Myanmar that the generals and aid groups hadwidely differing views as to immediate priorities.

"Getting a needs assessment done in time for the donors'meeting is critical to get everyone on the same page," he toldreporters in London.

In one town in the upper delta, a steady stream of refugeesarrived after travelling for days from Pyinsalu, one of theworst-hit districts.

"I didn't have any kids, but I lost all my relatives. It'sonly my wife and me now," said one man, his clothes soaked byrain and wearing no shoes.

In the last 50 years, only two Asian cyclones have exceededthe human toll of Nargis -- a 1970 storm that killed 500,000people in neighbouring Bangladesh and another that killed143,000 people in 1991, also in Bangladesh.

(Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Grant McCool)