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Myanmar turns back Qatari cyclone rescue team
Myanmar's junta turned back a disaster rescue team from Qatar because the flight only had permission to deliver aid supplies, an official paper said on Friday.
- Agencies
- Published: 09:28 May 9, 2008
- Image Credit: AP
- A Myanmar child displaced following Cyclone Nargis looks on at a temporary shelter on the outskirts of Yangon.
Yangon: Myanmar's junta turned back a disaster rescue team from Qatar because the flight only had permission to deliver aid supplies, an official paper said on Friday.
International frustration is mounting at delays by the generals in giving visas to aid workers and landing rights for flights, including those from the US military.
The foreign ministry said Myanmar would accept "relief in cash and kind" but not foreign aid workers.
"Myanmar is not in a position to receive rescue and information teams from foreign countries at the moment," the government-run Myanma Ahlin newspaper reported, adding that the junta wants to receive and distribute aid by itself.
Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej cancelled a planned trip to Myanmar. "After they said today they would not welcome foreign staff, there is no point of me going there," Samak said.
Experts say Myanmar is short of the massive relief operation needed for a disaster that has severely affected 1.5 million people and may have killed as many as 100,000.
The junta is holding a referendum on an army-drafted constitution on Saturday, and opponents have suggested the delays are because it does not want an influx of foreigners before the vote.
Outside Myanmar, officials and diplomats have lashed out at the junta for delaying aid to hundreds of thousands of people in cyclone-hit areas.
"We're outraged by the slowness of the response of the government of Burma to welcome and accept assistance," US Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters.
"The Burmese regime is behaving appallingly," Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Friday, adding that he wanted Southeast Asian nations and China to apply more pressure on Myanmar.
Related Links
- Myanmar urges vote for referendum
- First plane with aid given clearance
- Nargis survivors battle malaria and diarrhoea outbreaks
- Suu Kyi's house damaged
- Mother gives birth amid destruction
- Cyclone dead could pass 100,000
- WFP aid reaching Myanmar homeless
- Hungry survivors storm shops as relief work limps
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