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May 14, 2008 8:35 pm US/Eastern
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U.S. To Keep Sending Aid To Myanmar
WASHINGTON (AP) ―
The Bush administration will continue to send emergency assistance to Myanmar's cyclone victims despite concerns the country's military government may be confiscating the aid or diverting it away from those most in need.
Officials from the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development said Wednesday the crisis is so severe that they are willing to risk American aid winding up in the wrong hands or for sale to ensure that at least some gets through. So, for the moment at least, they said supplies would keep flowing if the junta allows it.
"At this time, the needs are so immense, they are so large, that we're taking some risks to hope that we can get the assistance through to the ones who are most in need," said USAID administrator Henrietta Fore. "There is an enormous humanitarian urgency to this effort."
"We are just focused on saving lives, to just keep people alive at this moment," she told reporters. "There is such an urgency to the humanitarian side that is now. It is not five days from now, it is just now. So we are focusing on the humanitarian response first and foremost and trying everything we can to get accountability."
Myanmar authorities say Cyclone Nargis left at least 34,273 dead and 27,838 missing although the International Red Cross estimates the death toll may already be between 68,833 and 127,990. U.N. agencies and other groups have been able to reach only 270,000 of the some two million believed displaced by the storm.
Since last week, Myanmar has allowed only eight U.S. military flights to land in Yangon with assistance but it has declined offers to help with the distribution of the supplies and rejected direct outside oversight of the process. U.S. disaster relief experts have been stuck in neighboring Thailand for more than a week awaiting permission to go in.
There have been reports that the military has confiscated some aid, that material is showing up for sale at local markets and that authorities have substituted low quality domestically produced food for better items provided by donors.
Some organizations have warned that the aid may be used for political ends and to prop up the authoritarian regime.
"Simply dropping aid off at Rangoon airport under the control of the abusive and ill-equipped Burmese military will not necessarily help victims of the cyclone," Human Rights Watch said Wednesday, referring to the former name of the capital and the country.
"Some supplies have already been diverted (and) humanitarian aid deliveries need to be independently monitored to ensure that assistance is given to those most in need," it said.
Fore and deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the United States was trying to verify those reports but stressed they had anecdotal evidence from aid workers on the ground that at least small amounts of U.S. assistance is getting to victims.
"I would dispute the idea that we're simply just taking aid in and leaving it there and not trying to do any follow-up," Casey said, adding that U.S. officials and others were pressing the Myanmar junta to let experts in to monitor the distribution.
"Even if the delivery of this aid is not what we would like it to be, we are getting reports that at least some of it is getting through and benefiting those who have suffered as a result of this disaster," he said. "In this instance, we are willing to continue in the short term this policy, because we do believe that there is a serious need."
(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)