Myanmar open to help from neighbors

YANGON, Myanmar -- Myanmar's junta, facing global outrage for spurning international assistance, appeared to relent Monday, saying it would allow its Asian neighbors to oversee the distribution of foreign relief to cyclone survivors.

It also approved a visit by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and prepared to host a meeting of aid donors, while claiming that losses from the May 2 to 3 disaster exceeded $10 billion.

Today begins a three-day official period of mourning for the dead, which numbered more than 78,000, according to official figures. Another 56,000 people are missing.

Conditions, especially in the hard-hit low-lying Irrawaddy delta, remain precarious for survivors, who face disease, malnutrition and exposure to the elements.

Myanmar, responding to entreaties from its Southeast Asia neighbors, promised Monday that it would let them into the cyclone-devastated areas to oversee and help distribute foreign assistance.

In Singapore, an emergency meeting of foreign ministers from the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreed to set up an ASEAN-led task force for distributing foreign aid.

"This mechanism will facilitate the effective distribution and utilization of assistance from the international community, including the expeditious and effective deployment of relief workers, especially health and medical personnel," said Singapore's Foreign Minister George Yeo.

Myanmar agreed to open its doors to medical teams from all ASEAN countries, Yeo said. ASEAN member Thailand had already sent teams in, as did non-ASEAN neighbors India and China.

Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win told the meeting that losses from the cyclone are expected to be "well over U.S. $10 billion."

ASEAN and the U.N. jointly announced an ASEAN-UN International Pledging Conference to seek some of the funding, to be held this Sunday in Yangon.

Also a sign of progress, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will arrive in Yangon on Thursday and stay until Friday night, when he will fly to Bangkok. He will return to Yangon on Sunday to co-chair the pledging conference, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said in New York. He will tour the battered delta during his visit, but it is not yet known which officials he will meet.

Earlier, junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe refused to take telephone calls from Ban and had not responded to letters from him, Montas said.

John Holmes, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, flew Monday by helicopter to the delta before returning to Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, to meet with international aid agencies, said a U.N. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media.

But the United Nations said the rest of its foreign staff were still barred from the delta and it described conditions there as "terrible," with hundreds of thousands of cyclone victims suffering from hunger, disease and lack of shelter.

The world body was seeing "some progress in terms of pipelines starting to come through" but the aid operation was still unsatisfactory," said Amanda Pitt, a U.N. spokeswoman in Bangkok.