By Aung Hla Tun
YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military has started to burycyclone victims in communal graves, villagers said onWednesday, as Western nations pledged to keep aid flowingdespite anger at its detention of opposition leader Aung SanSuu Kyi.
The former Burma has been promised millions of dollars inWestern help since Cyclone Nargis, but this cut no ice with thejunta regarding the Nobel laureate, who has been under housearrest or in prison for nearly 13 of the last 18 years.
Officials drove to Suu Kyi's lakeside Yangon home onTuesday to read out an extension order in person, but it wasunclear whether the extension was for six months or a year.
"It is more likely one year," said a senior police sourceclose to officials in charge of the 62-year-old's detention.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who just returned toNew York from an aid mission in Myanmar, expresseddisappointment but refrained from sharp criticism in light ofthe disaster, which left 134,000 dead or missing and 2.4million destitute.
"The sooner restrictions on Aung San Suu Kyi and otherpolitical figures are lifted, the sooner Myanmar will be ableto move toward ... restoration of democracy and full respectfor human rights," he said.
Western nations were more forthright in their criticism ofSuu Kyi's ongoing detention.
U.S. President George W. Bush said he was "deeply troubled"by the extension and called for the more than 1,000 politicalprisoners in Myanmar to be freed. However, the State Departmentsaid it would not affect U.S. cyclone aid.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won a 1990poll by a landslide only to be denied power by the military,which has ruled the impoverished country for 46 years.
RED CROSS OFFERS TO HELP BURY DEAD
Few had expected Suu Kyi to be released, but the extensionwas a reminder of the junta's refusal to make any concessionson the domestic political front despite its grudging acceptanceof foreign help after the May 2 cyclone.
Witnesses say many villages have received no outside help,and the waterways of the former Burma's "rice bowl" remainlittered with bloated and rotting animal carcasses and corpses.
There has been no official word on plans to dispose ofbodies, but villagers said soldiers brought about a dozencorpses to two sites for burial in Khaw Mhu, 40 km southwest ofYangon.
"The soldiers told everyone to shoo, to go away," one localwoman said, adding that bodies were covered with "white powder"and then concreted over.
In Dedaye, also in the delta, a boatman said there werearound 40 or 50 dead bodies in one waterway.
"We did the burial ourselves. If I know the dead person,I'll bury his body. If he knows the other dead person, he'llbury it." A World Health Organization official played down theimmediate health risk from the corpses but said the issueneeded to be addressed to prevent the sight of decaying bodiesadding to the trauma of the survivors.
The Red Cross, which recovered thousands of bodies afterthe 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, has offered to help in the grimtask.
ACCESS IMPROVING, SAYS U.N.
Three weeks after the cyclone's 120 mph (190 kph) winds andsea surge devastated the delta, the United Nations said it hadraised roughly 60 percent of its initial $200 million (101million pound) target for aid and relief workers were gettingmore access.
"We've reached just over a million people with some kind ofaid," U.N. humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes toldreporters.
Junta leader Senior General Than Shwe promised U.N. chiefBan last week that he would allow all legitimate foreign aidworkers access to victims across the country.
Holmes said he did not know if all roadblocks had beenremoved, but the situation was better.
"There's still a lot of people out there who have receivednothing or certainly not enough," he said.
(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau at the UnitedNations and Darren Schuettler in Bangkok; Writing by Ed Davies;Editing by Ed Cropley)
