Northern 21 May 2008
AUNG San Suu Kyi's opposition party today called on the UN to take a greater role in delivering aid to cyclone victims in Burma, on the eve of UN chief Ban Ki-moon's visit to the country.
The National League for Democracy said relief work in the hardest-hit parts of the country has not "been performed competently, effectively or in a timely manner".
The party asked "the international community, including the United Nations to assist, with love and sympathy, in preventing further economic and social calamities, epidemics and other scourges".
"The secretary general is also requested to try his utmost to assist the people of Burma, who are in great trouble."
Ban is set to arrive in Rangoon on Thursday to press the regime to accept a major international relief effort for two million cyclone survivors who are still in desperate need of food, shelter and medicine nearly three weeks after the storm hit.
At least 133,000 people are dead or missing after Cyclone Nargis pounded Burma, laying waste to broad swathes of the country, including the main rice-growing regions in the Irrawaddy Delta.
Ban said today that he would meet junta leader Than Shwe during his visit to the country, but has not commented on whether he would see Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Nobel peace prize winner led her party to a landslide victory in 1990 elections, but was not allowed to govern. Instead, she has spent most of the time since then under house arrest in Rangoon.
Western nations have imposed sanctions on the regime over its refusal to free Aung San Suu Kyi, causing deep mistrust that analysts say partly explains the junta's refusal to allow a major international relief effort.
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