Myanmar Faces Pressure To Allow Major Aid Effort

World pressure intensified Wednesday on Myanmar’s military leaders to allow massive aid into their ravaged country. The United States warned that deaths following a devastating cyclone could reach 100,000 and France suggested invoking United Nations powers to force delivery of international relief supplies, even if over the objections of the government.

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An aerial view of a town in the southern Irrawaddy Delta region of Myanmar that was devastated by the cyclone on Saturday. More Photos

The most senior American diplomat in Myanmar said the death toll could escalate sharply — even as high as 100,000 — if aid and safe drinking water does not reach the Irrawaddy Delta, the region that was hit hardest early Saturday when Cyclone Nargis destroyed a vast swath of coastal Myanmar.

The diplomat, Shari Villarosa, the chargé d’affaires at the United States Embassy in Myanmar, said the provisional estimate of a possible 100,000 dead was a worst case scenario and was based on information being provided by an international aid organization, which she did not name.

Amid heightened anxiety about the need to alleviate the devastation of the cyclone, the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said that the United Nations should invoke its “responsibility to protect” civilians as the basis for a resolution to allow the delivery of international aid even without the permission of the military junta.

Despite the emerging scale of the disaster, the Myanmar government has let in little aid and has restricted movement in the delta, aid agencies say. It has not granted visas to aid workers, even though supplies are being marshaled in nearby countries like Thailand.

“We are seeing at the United Nations if we can’t implement the responsibility to protect, given that food, boats and relief teams are there, and obtain a United Nations’ resolution which authorizes the delivery and imposes this on the Burmese government,” Mr. Kouchner, who founded the aid group Doctors Without Borders, told reporters in Paris.

The Myanmar government had put its official tally of the deaths from the cyclone at 22,500, and said a further 41,000 people were missing.

But Ms. Villarosa said during a conference call with reporters that the Myanmar government now estimated the death toll at 70,000 deaths, mostly in the delta area, Reuters reported.

“The situation in the delta sounds more and more horrendous,” she said, adding that many people had died when the storm struck while they were sleeping. They were either inundated in their sleep or swept out to sea, she said, Reuters reported.

A United Nations official in Bangkok, Richard Horsey, said on Wednesday that “thousands of bodies” were floating in nearly 2,000 square miles of the flooded delta.

Up to 1 million people are estimated to have been left homeless, and perhaps 40 percent of those killed are children

In 2005, the United Nations recognized the concept of “responsibility to protect” civilians when their governments could or would not do it, even if this meant intervention that violated national sovereignty. But it has been rarely applied.

Visa approvals have not been given for United Nations disaster relief specialists, the aid officials said. Of the several dozen employees of United Nations agencies waiting in Bangkok for visas, only a handful have received approval.

“We were very hopeful we would get positive responses,” said Tony Banbury, the regional director of the United Nations World Food Program. “Unfortunately, we got no response.”

The agency, one among a half-dozen with staff on standby, is flying in 45 tons of high-energy biscuits on Thursday morning from warehouses in Bangladesh, but has 13 personnel waiting to enter Myanmar to help with distribution.

The junta only agreed to allow the shipment after a day of discussions, Mr. Banbury said.

“When we informed them that we wanted to transport these biscuits by air the initial response was okay, as long as you hand them over to us,” he said. “That’s not the way we operate. That turned into an all-day discussion. In the end they agreed that the World Food Program would be responsible for handing them out.”

The Myanmar government has told United Nations officials that it dedicated seven helicopters and 80 ships to relief operations.

“Seven is a very small number considering the enormous logistical needs,” said Paul Risley, a spokesman for the World Food Program’s Asia operations. The political party of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest, has called for urgent international aid. But the reclusive generals who run Myanmar are obviously reluctant to allow large numbers of foreigners into the country.

One reason may be that on Saturday, Burmese are supposed to vote on an important referendum on a proposed constitution backed by the military; so far, voting is expected to go ahead in much of the country.Many countries are sending supplies to neighboring Thailand to await approval to move them into Myanmar. Spain, for example, announced that it will send a plane with 13 tons of medicine, tents and drinking water to Thailand, while awaiting permission from Yangon to deliver the aid.

Graham Bowley reported from New York and Steven Erlanger from Paris. Helene Cooper reported from Washington. Thomas Fuller contributed reporting from Bangkok.

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