Myanmar leader makes first visit to relief camp

State-run radio said the government has so far spent about $2 million for relief work and has received millions of dollars worth of relief supplies from local and international donors.

Still, aid agencies say some 2.5 million survivors are in desperate need of help -food, shelter from intermittent monsoon rains, medicines, clean drinking water and sanitation. A U.N. report said Saturday that emergency relief from the international community had reached only 500,000 people.

Save the Children, a global aid agency, expressed concern Sunday about the thousands of children now suffering from severe acute malnourishment, the most serious level of hunger.

"When people reach this stage, they can die in a matter of days," said Jasmine Whitbread, who heads the agency's operation in Britain.

U.N. and other major international aid agencies such as World Vision have been forced to depend on their limited local Myanmar staff to distribute aid in the delta, and say a much greater effort is needed if more diseases and deaths are to be prevented.

Although U.S., British and French warships loaded with aid are just off its coastline, Myanmar has refused to let them join in relief efforts.

Malloch-Brown said Britain and Myanmar had reached a kind of consensus over the direction of the aid operation under which Asian countries such as India, China, Thailand and Indonesia would take the lead in conjunction with the U.N.

"There is now a leadership which the Burmese can accept and we can work through to deliver our assistance," he said.