By Aung Hla Tun
YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's junta has given the U.S.military permission to fly in relief supplies for the survivorsof Cyclone Nargis, Thai Supreme Commander Boonsrang Niumpradittold Reuters on Thursday.
"We have helped the Americans to talk to the Myanmargovernment to allow U.S. planes participating in Cobra Gold tofly humanitarian aid to Myanmar. They just agreed," he said,referring to joint U.S.-Thai military exercises.
A U.S. embassy official confirmed the decision andBoonsrang said the first flights could leave Thailand within aday or two.
"They were very suspicious that the Americans would do morethan just distribute relief supplies, but we helped convincethe Burmese to allow the Americans in," Boonsrang said.
The decision is a surprise given the huge distrust andacrimony between the former Burma's generals and Washington,which has imposed tough sanctions to try to end decades ofmilitary rule.
However, international pressure had been building on thejunta to throw its doors wide open to an international reliefoperation for the worst cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when143,000 people were killed in neighbouring Bangladesh.
Aid has been trickling into one of the world's mostisolated and impoverished countries, although experts feared itwould be too little to cope with the aftermath of Nargis, whichleft up to 100,000 feared dead and one million missing.
The storm pulverised the Irrawaddy Delta with 190 kmh (190MPH) winds followed by a massive tidal wave on Saturday.
Three planes loaded with vital U.N. emergency supplies forMyanmar's cyclone victims were delayed on Thursday, awaitingclearance from the military government hours after they weredue to land, U.N. officials said.
"They need assistance today. They needed it yesterday,"Tony Banbury, Asia regional director of the U.N. World FoodProgramme WFP, said in Bangkok.
"They can't wait and they shouldn't be asked to wait untiltomorrow and it's crucial that food, water, shelter and medicalsupplies need to go in right away."
Another WFP official said the three planes were waiting ontarmacs in Bangkok, Dhaka and Dubai with 38 tonnes of supplies.
The WFP officials said they believed one Thai commercialcargo plane had landed in Yangon with seven tonnes ofhigh-energy biscuits.
CLUTCHING TREES
Cyclone Nargis, which means "daffodil" in Urdu, slammedinto coastal towns and villages in the rice-growing deltasouthwest of Yangon on Saturday, the most devastating storm tohit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people were killed inneighbouring Bangladesh.
WFP spokesman Paul Risley said aid agencies normally expectto fly in experts and supplies within 48 hours of a disaster,but nearly a week after the Myanmar cyclone, few internationalrelief groups have been able to send reinforcements intoMyanmar.
Witnesses reported that villages were destroyed and peoplefought for survival by clutching trees as the storm broughtwalls of water charging inland from the sea.
Aid has been trickling in from other Asian nations, butgovernments and relief agencies are putting increasing pressureon Myanmar's reclusive military rulers to throw their borderswide open to as much help as possible.
Reports of cyclone damage in a country that used to be theworld's largest rice exporter added to worries about tightglobal supplies of the grain.
The U.N. Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairssaid 5,000 square km (1,930 square miles) of the delta wereunder water.
The government insists it has enough rice reserves,although the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation saiddamage to crops and storage buildings in the delta could meanthat Myanmar will need short-term imports and miss its 2008export targets.
(Additional reporting by Grant McCool in Bangkok; Editingby Bill Tarrant)
