ASEAN urges world to keep sending aid to Myanmar through Thailand

ASEAN urges world to keep sending aid to Myanmar through Thailand
The Associated Press , Bangkok Thu, 05/08/2008 5:50 PM Headlines
A bloc of Southeast Asian countries appealed to the international community Thursday to keep sending aid through neighboring Thailand to cyclone-stricken Myanmar.
"Please keep the help coming, keep the contributions coming, and if you have to, go to Thailand, park there and wait for redistribution from there," said Association of Southeast Nationssecretary-general Surin Pitsuwan.
Myanmar's state media said Cyclone Nargis has killed at least 22,980 people and left 42,119 missing, but only a handful of U.N. aid workers had so far been allowed into the impoverished Southeast Asian country, which the government has kept isolated for five decades to maintain its iron-fisted control.
The U.S. and other countries rushed supplies to the region, but most of it was being held outside Myanmar while awaiting the junta's permission to deliver it.
"I'm very concerned, I'm under tremendous pressure," Pitsuwan said. "We hope we will have the permission and the opening soon before it is too late."
Pitsuwan said he had been trying to persuade aid agencies to go first to Bangkok because it was "the most logical point now, before any other long-term arrangement can be made."
He said Thailand was geographically well placed to make aid deliveries to Myanmar.
International assistance began trickling in Wednesday with the first shipments of medicine, clothing and food. But the junta, which normally restricts access by foreign officials and groups, was slow to give permission for workers to enter.
Pitsuwan said the military junta was having consultations about the best way to accept the international assistance.
"I don't think they say no (to international aid) ... they are considering picking and choosing," he said.
Pitsuwan said ASEAN was looking for ways of "accommodating those concerns." (***) From www.thejakarta.post