By Aung Hla Tun
YANGON (Reuters) - Hopes of a deal to speed up aid tomillions of Myanmar cyclone victims rose on Monday as the U.N.said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon would visit this week andSoutheast Asia kicked off its own disaster-response meeting.
Ban's trip is expected to culminate in a rare tete-a-tetewith junta supremo Than Shwe, who has refused to answer phonecalls from the United Nations boss since Cyclone Nargis strucktwo weeks ago, leaving 134,000 dead and missing and up to 2.5million destitute.
The U.N. also wants a conference in Bangkok on May 24 tomarshal funds for the relief effort in the former Burma, wherethe military government has so far refused to admit large-scaleforeign aid for fear it will loosen its 46-year grip on power.
Humanitarian agencies say the death toll from Nargis,already one of the most devastating cyclones to hit Asia, couldsoar without a massive increase of emergency food, shelter andmedicine to the worst-hit Irrawaddy delta.
Non-government aid organisation Save the Children said in aSunday statement its research had found some "30,000 childrenunder the age of five in the cyclone-affected Irrawaddy Deltawere already acutely malnourished before the cyclone hit."
"Of those, Save the Children believes that several thousandare at risk of death in the next two to three weeks because ofa lack of food."
However, Britain's Asia minister, Mark Malloch-Brown, toldReuters in Yangon on Sunday that diplomats may have turned thecorner in brokering a deal to get aid flowing whichaccommodated the generals' deep distrust of the outside world-- and in particular the West.
"Like all turning points in Burma, the corner will have afew 'S' bends in it," Malloch-Brown said after a series ofmeetings with top junta officials.
Little is known about the deal, although it is probably nocoincidence foreign ministers of the Association of SoutheastAsian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member, wereholding a cyclone response meeting on Monday in Singapore.
Malloch-Brown, who came to Yangon after visiting some ASEANmembers, said an Asian/U.N.-led process had already begun andother countries would make contributions through this channel.
Asian nations considered friendly by Myanmar have sent inaid groups and an ASEAN assessment team that has been on theground in the delta is due to report to the Singapore meeting.
TRICKLE OF AID
While aid has been trickling into Myanmar, the U.N.'s WorldFood Programme (WFP) says it has managed to get rice and beansto just 212,000 of the 750,000 people it thinks are most inneed.
"It's not enough. There are a very large number of peoplewho are yet to receive any kind of assistance and that's what'skeeping our teams working round the clock," WFP spokesmanMarcus Prior said in Bangkok.
Myanmar analysts are making much of the reclusive ThanShwe's first appearance since the disaster in Yangon, the cityhe deserted for a remote new capital 250 miles (390 km) to thenorth in 2005.
State television showed the bespectacled 74-year-old ThanShwe meeting in Yangon on Monday with ministers involved in therescue effort and touring some cyclone-hit areas.
The U.N.'s Ban is likely to land in Yangon on Wednesdayevening and travel to the Irrawaddy delta, his spokeswomansaid.
Meanwhile the U.N.'s chief humanitarian officer, JohnHolmes, started a government tour of the delta on Monday afterflying in on Sunday night, officials said.
He is expected to meet Prime Minister Thein Sein on Tuesdayand deliver 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 ASEAN to oversee aid delivery.
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.
At least 232,000 people were killed when the tsunami strucknations bordering the Indian Ocean.
Despite his optimism on aid deal, Britain's Malloch-Brownsaid the junta's lingering suspicions made it unlikely foreignaid workers would be admitted in numbers comparable to otherrecent disasters in Asia.
(Writing by Jerry Norton and Ed Cropley; Editing by JohnChalmers)
