Burma cyclone aid effort hit as damage to port keeps big ships at sea

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17 May 2008

The international effort to save the survivors of Cyclone Nargis has been jeopardised further by the destruction of Burma's biggest port, which is likely to be out of action for months. The oil and container terminals in Rangoon, Burma's biggest city, were crippled in the storm 12 days ago, and repair work has not even begun, according to United Nations officials and foreign mariners who have seen the damage. The UN is making plans to offload supplies directly into the stricken Irrawaddy delta area, with flat-bottomed craft unloading from large cargo vessels anchored off the coast.
But these ambitious schemes will be impossible to implement without the agreement of the Burmese Government, which is still blocking the large-scale delivery of foreign aid.
“The jetties are broken and the [oil] lines are broken,” the captain of a foreign-registered oil tanker, told The Times. “They said to me, 'Don't worry, we'll have it fixed in a month'. But it will take three or four months - it will be August before it is ready.”
The deputy country head of the UN's World Food Programme, Hakan Tongkul, told The Times: “It looks really, really bad. Not only have we got massive political hurdles but there are big shortages of logistics to import food to meet people's needs.”
At an emergency meeting of the EU in Brussels yesterday France called for the UN to use its “responsibility to protect” powers to overrule resistance from Burma's rulers to foreign assistance so that supplies and experts could be flown straight in.
Although the idea was backed in principle by Germany, it is not thought likely to win the approval of Russia and China that is necessary for it to clear the UN Security Council.
The EU sent its development commissioner, Louis Michel, to plead with the junta in Rangoon to admit more aid and experts. He has not yet been granted a visa but Mr Michel will arrive in Bangkok today and wait there until he is allowed into Burma.
After the first American aid shipment landed on Monday, the Burmese military regime said that Burma was grateful but there was no further requirement for aid workers.
President Bush called the junta “isolated or callous” for turning their backs on offers of assistance. In unusually strong language, Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, expressed his “immense frustration”.
The EU leaders issued a strongly worded statement calling for “free and unfettered access” for aid workers and will meet again in ten days to decide on their next move.
Even without the reluctance of the Burmese junta, the country's wretched infrastructure presents profound obstacles to the importation of large-scale foreign aid. The problems begin at Rangoon's airport, the entry point for the relatively small amounts of aid which have entered the country so far.
A Burmese worker at the airport, who cannot be named for fear of retribution by the authorities, said: “They do not have the unloading equipment for aid flights, so the job has to be done by 300 soldiers, and they're overworked, tired and angry. Instead of doing it in a few minutes, it takes hours.”
The obvious solution would be to bring in aid by ship, but this is impossible because of the damage to the cargo terminals. So far the World Food Programme has been able to bring in only 361 tonnes of food aid, of which just 175 tonnes have been distributed.

Source: Times Online