U.S.-Myanmar animosity hurts cyclone-relief effort

As Myanmar's aid crisis deepens, the Bush administration is facing criticism that its denunciations of the ruling junta might have contributed to the government's resistance to allowing foreign aid workers into the storm-ravaged country.

On Friday, the country's military leaders seized a shipment of U.N. food intended for victims of a devastating cyclone that struck last weekend, declaring they would accept food and medicine but not the foreign-aid workers international groups say are crucial.

The generals continued to permit a small number of aid deliveries and promised to allow the first air shipment from the Pentagon — a single plane — on Monday, a significant concession because the U.S. has been Myanmar's leading critic, imposing sanctions and lobbying for a U.N. resolution condemning the junta for human-rights violations.

But the refusal of the country's iron-fisted rulers to allow doctors and disaster-relief experts to enter in large numbers contributed to the growing concern that starvation and epidemic diseases could end up killing people on the same scale as the storm itself.

The International Red Cross estimated Friday that the combined efforts of relief agencies and the Myanmar government have distributed aid to only 220,000 of up to 1.9 million people left homeless, injured or subject to disease and hunger after the storm.

Seattle-based assistance

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has donated $3 million and will provide software to help reunite family members separated in the cyclone, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said Friday.

The funds were transferred to the aid agencies Mercy Corps, World Vision and Care "so they can go in there and help as quickly as possible," Gates told The Associated Press.

Seattle-based World Concern, which has worked in the country for 12 years and has about 200 staff there, said so far the organization has been able to help at least 50,000 people, mostly in the Yangon area. It's distributed water-purification tablets, food and plastic sheeting for shelter — purchased in Myanmar — as well as coordinated teams of Burmese medical staff.

Federal Way-based World Vision, which has been in Myanmar for about 40 years and has 580 people there, says it's been about to help about 78,000 people in the Yangon area.

Seeking a way in

Meanwhile, the Bush administration pressured China and other allies of Myanmar's military government, hoping they would prevail on it to open up to help. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke Thursday with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and Friday with Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee. U.S. Ambassador Eric John delivered the same message in Thailand, a neighbor with close ties to Myanmar's government.

Diplomacy was having little influence over the junta, which brutally put down a popular uprising led by Buddhist monks last year in a country whose citizens' deeply held Buddhist traditions often interpret natural disasters as a sign of political illegitimacy.

The generals who rule Myanmar view foreign assistance as a potential threat to their two-decade rule.

If the Myanmarese government does not relent, U.S. officials are discussing other options, including bypassing the government and sending helicopters directly to the worst-hit Irrawaddy Delta, where more than 1 million people may have lost their homes.

Harsh words from U.S.

After Cyclone Nargis hit last Saturday, first lady Laura Bush and other administration officials Monday said the regime had failed to give its citizens warning of the storm's approach. They condemned the junta as illegitimate and blasted its human-rights record.

The next day, in a move that was certain to sharpen tensions with Myanmar, known as Burma until the military rulers renamed it Myanmar in 1989, President Bush presided at a ceremony presenting, in absentia, the Congressional Gold Medal to Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained democracy activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Critics said the harsh administration comments were poorly timed and risked reinforcing the ruling junta's suspicions of the outside world.

"For the humanitarian purpose, you have to put politics aside and say unequivocally that we want to help," said Joel Charny, vice president for policy at Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy group. "We know the Burmese generals are going to be suspicious. We shouldn't be taking an approach that's going to make it more likely that backs get up and doors remain closed."

White House officials denied that comments by top administration figures have set back the relief effort, but by Wednesday, Stephen Hadley, Bush's national-security adviser, noting the Myanmar government was blocking aid workers from other countries besides those from U.S. agencies, refrained from further criticism, saying, "I don't want to politicize this."

As foreign aid groups scurried to deliver relief, the generals who run Myanmar continued to focus on a separate priority: a constitutional referendum scheduled for today. Fourteen years in the making, the constitution is formulated to keep power in the hands of military officers, even if they change to civilian clothes.

Political analysts say that in Myanmar's deeply hierarchical structure, the only opinions that really matter are those of Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the reclusive strongman known for uncompromising attitudes toward his opposition and the outside world — and whose most trusted adviser is said to be his astrologer.

Compiled from Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Times and Associated Press reports. Additional information from Seattle Times staff reporter Janet I. Tu.