US weighs aid drops for Myanmar cyclone victims

Officials said there were several problems with air drops into an unpermissive environment, especially if there are no experts on the ground to monitor the distribution of aid. Desperate people could riot over the assistance and there is the possibility that security forces might confiscate it and keep it out of the hands of the needy, they said.

The government has reported more than 20,000 deaths and more than 40,000 missing from Cyclone Nargis that hit Myanmar, particularly the Irrawaddy River delta, last weekend. A U.S. diplomat said Wednesday that the death toll in the delta could exceed 100,000. The U.N. estimates that a million people have been left homeless.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military was stepping up preparations for a humanitarian mission to Myanmar, readying ships and Marines now in the region for a multinational exercise.

The U.S. Air Force moved more airplanes to a staging area in Thailand and the Navy was transporting Marines and helicopters into Thailand from an aviation combat element of the USS Essex expeditionary strike group. Ships were to move later Thursday, a defense official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

The Navy and Marine Corps happened to have ships and thousands of service members in the Gulf of Thailand for a multinational exercise on humanitarian missions -an exercise that started Thursday.

Because it would take the ships several days to get to the Myanmar area, the Navy was sending some of the group's helicopters and troops ahead over land, the official said.

Officials said that although the military junta has not agreed to allow U.S. humanitarian assistance, it did ask for some other U.S. help -satellite pictures of the cyclone-devastated areas.

"They asked our defense attache at the embassy in Rangoon for some imagery and we provided it," said Marine Maj. Stuart Upton, a Pentagon spokesman.

Separately, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution urging humanitarian aid to Myanmar's people and asking Myanmar's government to remove restrictions on international aid groups.

Democratic Sen. John Kerry said in a statement that the cyclone "could be remembered as the moment when the United States and the world came to the aid of the Burmese people and made it clear that while we loathe the junta that has isolated Burma from the world and oppressed its citizens, we find common cause with the people of Burma and we will be there by their side at this difficult time."