Aid agencies are preparing to help inhabitants of Myanmar's cyclone hit Irrawaddy Delta, after the country said it would open its doors to international relief workers. But on Saturday only a single aircraft carrying water treatment equipment was reported to have left for Myanmar from an aid co-ordination centre in Thailand. After weeks of refusing outside assistance, Myanmar's ruling generals told the UN they would open the borders to relief teams of all nationalities.
But there has so far been little sign of the progress Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, promised following his talks with the generals. "We're pretty shocked that the secretary-general seems to have accepted this at face value," Jeremy Woodrum, director of the US Campaign for Burma, told Al Jazeera. "The regime is willing to talk to them as always but it never seems to lead to any progress. I'm hopeful there could be some progress in the next couple of days but that would be a definite break from history," he said.
"If the military regime lifts checkpoints that allow aid agencies to go into the delta region that was hit by the cyclone, then that would be real progress, but as long as those checkpoints are in place, I have difficulty seeing it as a real breakthrough."