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Aid agencies call on Myanmar to act on pledge

UN opens air base to help relief work

AP, AFP, Yangon/ Bangkok
Foreign aid agencies yesterday called on Myanmar's junta to urgently clarify the rules for operating in the country's cyclone-devastated areas, expressing hope tinged with scepticism after the regime promised to open its doors to the international community.
Myanmar's ruling generals offered no elaboration after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced Friday that the junta had agreed to allow "all aid workers" into the country. The concession came after three weeks of blocking relief for cyclone survivors and on the eve of an international donors conference Sunday in Myanmar.
"1 want to be optimistic, but I'm sceptical,' Lionel Rosenblatt, president emeritus of US-based Refugees International said, voicing comments echoed by relief agencies worldwide. "Myoverall impression is scepticism and what tills actually means. The devil is going to be in the implementation."
The United Nations opened a relief staging post at an airport in the Thai capital on Saturday to help speed up the cyclone aid effort in neighbouring Myanmar.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was on hand to open die hub just a day after talks with Myanmar's junta leader Than Shwe, which he said led to an agreement to let foreign aid workers into die country.
The possible breakthrough distracted attention from the junta's
widely criticised decision to push ahead Saturday with a constitutional referendum in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, and hard-hit delta areas
Critics say the proposed charter is designed to strengthen the military's grip on power and they had urged the government to focus on relief efforts.
Saturday's voting was a pointless exercise. The rest of the country voted May 10, and state radio has said the delayed balloting could not reverse the constitution's reported approval by 92.4 percent of the 22 million eligible voters.
Detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi cast her ballot on Friday evening when referendum officials visited her Yangon home with a ballot card, an official said on
condition of anonymity. Suu Kyi's opposition party called for a ’No" vote on the proposed charter, which effectively bars her from holding elected office.
Suu Kyi's home was damaged during the May 2-3 cyclone, which decimated the Irrawaddy delta, Myanmar's key rice-producing region in the southwest.
The xenophobic junta has kept the delta virtually off-limits to foreign aid workers, who have been barred from leavingYangon.
The push to get aid workers into the delta is increasingly urgent because an estimated. 2.5 million people remain in severe need, threat -ened by disease, hunger and expo sure because of the loss of their homes.