By Aung Hla Tun
YANGON (Reuters) - Hopes turned to a meeting of SoutheastAsian foreign ministers on Monday for a breakthrough inspeeding up aid flows to the millions of desperate cyclonesurvivors in Myanmar.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will travel to Myanmarthis week to apply pressure on the country's military rulers toopen more channels for help. His spokeswoman, Michele Montas,said she also expected an international conference in Bangkokon May 24 to marshal funds for the relief effort.
Monday's meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN) foreign ministers in Singapore came after upbeatcomments from Britain's Asia minister, Mark Malloch-Brown,about the prospects for getting more aid into the former Burma.
He told Reuters at the weekend that a turning point wasnear for opening the spigots wider for help to up to 2.5million desperate survivors of the cyclone that left at least134,000 people dead or missing.
"But, like all turning points in Burma, the corner willhave a few 'S' bends in it," Malloch-Brown said in Yangon,where he saw a series of top officials.
Aid has been trickling into the country but the junta,suspicious of the outside world, has been reluctant to admitmajor foreign relief operations and the workers to run them.
The World Food Programme (WFP) says it has managed to getrice and beans to 212,000 of the 750,000 people it thinks aremost in need.
Malloch-Brown, who came to Yangon after visiting some ASEANmembers, said the Asian/U.N.-led process had already begun.
Asian nations considered friendly by Myanmar were sendingin aid teams and an ASEAN assessment team was on the ground, hesaid. That team is due to report to the meeting in Singapore.
Other countries would make their contributions through thischannel, Malloch-Brown said.
RARE APPEARANCE
Than Shwe, the reclusive leader of junta, made a publicappearance on Sunday for the first time since the disaster.
U.N. chief Ban should arrive in Myanmar on Wednesdayevening and travel to the Irrawaddy delta, the area hit hardestby Cyclone Nargis on May 2, his spokeswoman said.
He hopes to meet senior members of Myanmar's government,she said, but she could not immediately say whether Than Shwewould be one of them. The general has refused to talk to Ban bytelephone since the cyclone.
State television showed Than Shwe meeting in Yangon onMonday with ministers involved in the rescue effort and touringsome cyclone-hit areas in the immediate vicinity.
The junta, which has ruled Myanmar in various incarnationsfor 46 years, moved the capital to Naypyidaw, 400 km (250miles) north from Yangon, the former Rangoon, in 2005. ThanShwe has rarely been seen in public since.
The United Nations' chief humanitarian officer, JohnHolmes, arrived in Yangon on Sunday night and was expected todeliver a message from Ban to the generals.
Ban previously proposed a "high-level pledging conference"to deal with the crisis, as well as having a joint coordinatorfrom the United Nations and Association of Southeast AsianNations (ASEAN) to oversee aid delivery.
Analysts speculated Than Shwe's appearance in Yangon meanthe was likely to meet Holmes or possibly Ban.
Thousands of children could die within weeks if food doesnot get to them soon, the aid organization Save the Childrensaid on Sunday. Malloch-Brown said the United Nations estimatedthat help had reached less than 25 percent of those in need.
RECORD DAMAGE
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.
If Myanmar's junta does not open its doors to a large-scaleaid operation like the one after the Asian tsunami in December2004, disaster experts say the death toll from Nargis couldclimb dramatically.
At least 232,000 people were killed when the tsunami strucknations bordering the Indian Ocean.
Despite his optimism about a possible aid breakthrough,Britain's Malloch-Brown said that because of the junta'ssuspicions, operations were still unlikely to involve numbersof foreign aid workers comparable to other recent disasters inAsia.
(Additional reporting by Patrick Worsnip at the UnitedNations and Nopporn Wong-Anan and Ed Cropley in Bangkok;Writing by Jerry Norton and Philip Barbara; Editing by JohnChalmers)
