GENEVA — Travel and visa obstacles Tuesday hampered aid deliveries to the estimated 1 million Myanmar residents believed to be homeless after the cyclone, officials said.
Assistance had started to reach people in and around Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, said Chris Kaye, the U.N. World Food Program’s director for Myanmar. But many coastal areas remained cut off from food supplies because of flooding and road damage.
U.N. relief spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said some U.N. workers planning to assess needs were still awaiting their visas to enter the country.
The United States said it was giving $3 million to U.N. agencies to help with their efforts, up from an initial emergency contribution of $250,000. The European Union will provide $3.1 million, according to a statement released by Slovenia, the current leader of the 27-nation bloc.
China is providing $1 million in aid, including relief materials worth $500,000, to help with disaster relief and rehabilitation efforts, a spokesman said.
But the United States and France complained about Myanmar’s reluctance to accept direct aid.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said France minimized its aid to about $309,000. He said Myanmar officials are willing to accept aid but insist on distributing it themselves, which he said was “not a good way of doing things.”
“It’s not a lot, but we don’t really trust the way the Burmese ministry would use the money,” said Kouchner, who also is the co-founder of the French aid group Doctors Without Borders.
