BANGKOK, Thailand — U.S. Navy ships are leaving Myanmar after failing to get the junta’s permission to unload aid to “ease the suffering of hundreds of thousands” of cyclone survivors, the top U.S. military commander in the Pacific said Tuesday.
Word of the aborted mercy mission comes even as the United Nations warned that a month after the cyclone swept through Myanmar, more than 1 million people still don’t have adequate food, water or shelter and junta policies are hindering relief efforts.
Adm. Timothy Keating ordered the vessels to leave the Myanmar area Thursday, after the U.S. made at least 15 attempts to persuade Myanmar’s leaders to allow ships, helicopters and landing craft to offload their aid.
Myanmar’s state media have said that they feared a U.S. invasion aimed at seizing the country’s oil deposits.
But the junta has also forbidden use of military helicopters from friendly neighboring nations, which are vital in rushing supplies to isolated survivors.
Keating, in a news release from Honolulu, said the USS Essex and accompanying ships would return if Myanmar’s leaders change their minds.
“I am both saddened and frustrated to know that we have been in a position to help ease the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people and help mitigate further loss of life but have been unable to do so because of the unrelenting position of the Burma military junta,” Keating said.
Myanmar is also known as Burma.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday that Myanmar’s obstruction of international efforts to help cyclone victims cost “tens of thousands of lives.”
Humanitarian groups say they continue to face hurdles from Myanmar’s military government in sending disaster experts and vital equipment into the country.
As a result, only a trickle of aid is reaching the storm’s estimated 2.4 million survivors, leaving many without even basic relief.
Aid groups are unable to provide 1.1 million survivors with sufficient food and clean water, while trying to prevent a second wave of deaths from malnutrition and disease, the U.N. said in its latest assessment report that circulated Tuesday.
Of the 1.3 million people who are getting help, most have been “reached with inconsistent levels of assistance,” the U.N. said.
“There remains a serious lack of sufficient and sustained humanitarian assistance for the affected populations,” the report said.
It also said the world body lacked “a clear understanding of the support being provided by the Government of Myanmar to its people.”
A big obstacle in providing relief has been reaching the delta.
The U.N.’s World Food Program has chartered helicopters to deliver aid to the hard-hit area, said Paul Risley, a spokesman for the agency in Bangkok, but the WFP is facing a 64 percent shortfall of its $70 million appeal to fund the operation.
