Save the children from starvation

The international aid group Save the Children says thousands of children in Myanmar, survivors of the recent devastating cyclone, could starve to death "within weeks" unless emergency aid and food supplies are rushed to them.

According to the group, children constitute up to 40 per cent of the victims of Cyclone Nargis. The United Nations believes nearly 134,000 people have died or gone missing, while 2.5 million survivors have been effected in the disaster.

The international community should keep its pressure on Myanmar's military rulers to accept a full-scale relief operation.

The international community should also take seriously recent reports some aid groups might use the catastrophe to transport children, many of them who lost their families, out of the country.

This has been done before - most recently by a French aid group, which tried to traffic orphaned children out of war-ravaged Darfur. The disaster that hit Myanmar must not be a justification to engage in such atrocious act.