YANGON (AFP) - - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Myanmar on Thursday in a high-profile bid to convince the regime to welcome a major international relief operation three weeks after the cyclone disaster.
With around two million desperate survivors still facing dire shortages of food, water, shelter and medicine, the junta's isolationist leader Than Shwe has stunned the world with his refusal to accept a major aid effort.
He was to meet with Than Shwe on Friday in the regime's remote capital of Naypyidaw. Ban repeatedly failed to get the general to take his phone calls after the May 2-3 storm, which left at least 133,000 people dead or missing.
"Our focus is on saving lives," he said in Bangkok on the eve of his trip, aimed at winning a bigger role for the international community in the relief effort. "This is a critical moment for Myanmar."
The secretary general began his official programme by making an offering for the storm's victims at the Shwedagon Pagoda, the holiest Buddhist shrine in Myanmar.
Keeping with tradition, he removed his shoes and socks as he walked around the site, offering flowers to a golden statue of Buddha and donating money for the catastrophe's survivors.
Ban also met Prime Minister Thein Sein in the main city Yangon before he was to set off to overfly some of the most devastated regions of the Irrawaddy Delta, which bore the brunt of the storm.
It is the first visit to Myanmar by a UN secretary general since 1964. The last trip was by U Thant, a Myanmar national, who led the world body when this country was still known as Burma.
Armed police lined the roads leading from the airport before Ban's arrival, while soldiers busied themselves cleaning the storm-damaged streets of Yangon.
The United Nations estimates that only 25 percent of those in need have been reached by international aid.
Although the United Nations has been critical of Myanmar's human rights record, Ban has insisted the aid effort should not be politicised.
The impoverished nation has accepted tonnes of donations from around the world, and has allowed US military planes to airlift supplies into the Yangon airport.
The regime this week also agreed to allow nine UN helicopters to work in remote regions hit by the storm, but still refuses to allow five US and French ships laden with relief supplies to enter the country.
Scores of medics from around Asia have been allowed to begin treating victims of the tragedy, but Myanmar has refused to issue visas to most disaster relief specialists, whose skills are needed to run a complex aid operation.
Ban said he wanted a logistics hub inside Myanmar, which has agreed to a joint mechanism between the United Nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to coordinate the emergency effort.
Exactly how that mechanism would work remains unclear, but the United Nations and ASEAN are set to host a donor meeting Sunday in Yangon to raise money for the operation.
Despite the tragedy and the intense diplomatic manoeuvring, Myanmar's junta is pressing ahead with its own political agenda.
Just days after the storm, the regime held a first round of voting on a new constitution, which dissidents say will entrench military rule.
The regime now insists on holding a second round of voting in the referendum Saturday in towns and villages that were devastated by the cyclone.
The regime's main foe, Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, is under house arrest, and her detention is expected to be extended by Monday.
Aung San Suu Kyi led her National League for Democracy to a landslide victory in Myanmar's last national elections in 1990, but the regime has never recognised the result and instead has kept her locked up for more than a decade.
Her detention is a key reason for years of sanctions by the United States and European countries, which tightened their restrictions last year after Myanmar staged a deadly crackdown on anti-junta marches led by Buddhist monks.
