THE US and France yesterday called for international aid to be delivered to cyclone victims without the permission of the Burmese military government if the regime continues to block the arrival of foreign aid workers and material assistance.
An aircraft loaded with UN aid was allowed to land yesterday, but it represented a tiny trickle compared with the humanitarian needs in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, which is feared to have killed 100,000 people and made up to a million homeless.
The US made its navy and air force available to deliver aid to the worst-hit areas, but suggestions yesterday that the Burmese regime might let food deliveries land were denied by government officials later.
The White House said it was still lobbying Burma, but Ky Luu, head of the US office of foreign disaster assistance, said the administration was considering air-dropping aid without the junta's permission.
At a security council meeting yesterday, France argued the UN had the authority to intervene under a 2005 resolution establishing that it did sometimes have a "responsibility to protect" people when nations failed to do so. But Britain's UN envoy, John Sawers, who chairs the security council, said the 2005 resolution "relates to acts of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and so forth, rather than government responses to natural disasters".
US ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad said the US was "outraged by the slowness of the response of the government of Burma to welcome and accept assistance". "We're shocked. It should be a no-brainer to accept the offer made by the international community," he said.
The British foreign office minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, Mark Malloch Brown, warned that time was running out. "[Aid] is still basically not going through, visas are not getting issued, flights are not being cleared - so it's a big deal," he said.
"We've got to be extremely forceful . . . there is no excuse for delay. Every hour and certainly every day counts at this point."
China, its closest diplomatic ally, also urged Burma to accept help. The unprecedented push came as a UN World Food Programme (WFP) aircraft loaded with tonnes of emergency supplies touched down in Rangoon. But two other planes that have languished for two days were still waiting to leave for Rangoon last night.
The painfully slow process despite the desperate need of a million survivors - many of whom have lived in the open for six days without food or clean water - convinced aid agencies that people were dying because of the regime's delay. The Burmese government's suspicion of outside help was characterised by the on-again, off-again saga of an offer of US assistance brokered by the Thai military.
Thailand said the Burmese would allow in an America military Hercules C-130 loaded with aid. "It has not happened," said Eric John, the US ambassador in Thailand. "This morning what the Thais had from the Burmese government was that we had permission to use the C-130. Since then, I think, the decision has been taken back by the Burmese."
Two aid flights carrying 25 tonnes of food and blankets from Indonesia are due in Rangoon this morning.
Thailand, India and China have dispatched five aircraft in addition to the WFP one that landed yesterday, following a seven-tonne shipment aboard a Thai Airways flight. The UN food organisation hoped two others were to leave imminently.
"We've got planes coming in with relief items," said Chris Kaye, WFP Burma director. "The challenge will be getting the material through the bureaucracy, out of the airport and down to the delta area." But the UN and other aid agencies view the presence of their specialist disaster management teams as almost as critical.
"A number of agencies are increasingly frustrated that visas for key staff have not come through," said Richard Horsey of the UN disaster management team.