UN in dark about Myanmar cyclone disaster needs

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John Holmes, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, will go to Myanmar on Sunday to try to convince junta leaders to grant more access for U.N. relief workers and massively scale up aid efforts, said Amanda Pitt, a U.N. spokeswoman in Bangkok, Thailand.

Some diplomats have also been invited by the regime to visit the delta, said Heinke Veit, an EU spokeswoman in Myanmar. She said she had no details.

Officials of various U.N. agencies called a news conference in Bangkok to give an update on their relief operations. The most basic data was missing, from the number of orphans to the extent of diseases and the number of refugee camps.

They also couldn't say whether all survivors are in camps, on the move or still living in destroyed villages in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta, an area the size of Austria. Cyclone Nargis also pounded Yangon, Myanmar's main city.

"The risk increases with each passing day," Pitt said, referring to the vulnerability of survivors to outbreaks of disease and other problems.

Even the death toll has not been confirmed.

"Everyone is still using range of figures because we don't have data yet. Access is making that difficult ... We simply don't have the information, and I can't say when we will have it," said Steve Marshall, a U.N. official who just came out of Myanmar.

The government says at least 43,318 people were killed and nearly 28,000 went missing when the May 2-3 cyclone turned the low-lying delta into a quagmire of shattered villages and squalid refugee camps ringed by fetid waters.

The Red Cross fears the toll may be as high as 128,000; the U.N. estimates more than 100,000 died.

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