By Aung Hla Tun
YANGON (Reuters) - Southeast Asian nations will take thelead in an international aid effort for cyclone-hit Myanmar,but the military junta will not give Western relief workersunfettered access to disaster areas, Singapore said on Monday.
"We will establish a mechanism so that aid from all overthe world can flow into Myanmar," Foreign Minister George Yeosaid.
He was speaking after hosting a regional meeting to prodthe generals to accept large-scale foreign aid and expertisefor up to 2.4 million people left destitute by Cyclone Nargis.
The details were to be worked out with the United Nations,which announced later on Monday that a donor conference wouldbe held in the cyclone-hit former capital, Yangon, on May 25.
Myanmar agreed to accept nearly 300 medical personnel fromits neighbours in the 10-member Association of Southeast AsianNations (ASEAN), the foreign ministers said in a statement.
A few have already sent teams two weeks after the disasterwhich left 134,000 dead or missing. But aid workers fromoutside ASEAN will only be granted visas on a case-by-casebasis.
"We have to look at specific needs -- there will not beuncontrolled access," Yeo said after the meeting which namedASEAN chief Surin Pitsuwan to work with the U.N. on aiddelivery.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was expected to fly toYangon on Wednesday to tour the worst-hit Irrawaddy delta andattend the donors' meeting co-chaired by ASEAN.
Humanitarian agencies say the death toll from Nargis, oneof the most devastating cyclones to hit Asia, could soarwithout a massive increase of emergency food, water, shelterand medicine to the delta, the country's rice bowl.
TRICKLE OF AID
While aid has been trickling into the delta, the U.N.'sWorld Food Programme (WFP) says it has managed to get rice andbeans to just 250,000 of the 750,000 people it thinks are mostin need.
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.
Analysts are making much of reclusive junta supremo ThanShwe's recent appearances in the disaster areas.
On Monday, the former Irrawaddy division commander visitedtwo badly-hit townships in the delta and called for "concertedefforts among the government, the military and the people forthe reconstruction of the region," state-run radio said.
On Sunday, state television showed the bespectacled74-year-old Senior General in Yangon, the city he deserted in2005 for a remote new capital 250 miles (390 km) to the north.meeting ministers involved in the rescue effort.
"It is not insignificant that he has been forced out of hislair," one Yangon diplomat said. "There are obviously some inthe military who see how enormous this is, and how enormouslywrong it could go without further support."
On Monday, state radio announced a three-day mourningperiod for cyclone victims, beginning on Tuesday.
It also reported the U.N.'s chief humanitarian officer,John Holmes, visited devastated Labutta and Bogalay townshipswith government officials.
Holmes is expected to meet Prime Minister Thein Sein onTuesday and deliver a message from Ban to the generals.
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.
The United States and France have naval ships equipped withaid supplies and helicopters waiting in international watersoff the Myanmar coast, although Paris and Washington say theywill not go in with the green light from the generals.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Mondaycountries on the U.N. Security Council that did not agree topressure Myanmar into opening its doors to foreign aid wereguilty of "cowardice".
China, Russia, Vietnam and South Africa oppose a Councilrole in what they say is a humanitarian, not a political issue.
ASEAN, which has a policy of non-interference in eachothers' affairs, has shunned taking unilateral humanitarianaction.
"It doesn't make sense for us to work on the basis offorcing aid on Myanmar because that would bring unnecessarycomplications and will lead to more suffering for the Myanmarpeople," Yeo said after the Singapore meeting.
(With additional reporting by Melanie Lee, Neil Chatterjee,Jan Dahinten and Olivia Rondonuwu in SINGAPORE; and MannyMogato in MANILA; Writing by Ed Cropley and Darren Schuettler;Editing by Jerry Norton)
