ASEAN to coordinate Myanmar aid effort

By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - Southeast Asian nations will take the lead in an international aid effort for cyclone-hit Myanmar, but the military junta will not give Western relief workers unfettered access to disaster areas, Singapore said on Monday.

"We will establish a mechanism so that aid from all over the world can flow into Myanmar," Foreign Minister George Yeo said.

He was speaking after hosting a regional meeting to prod the generals to accept large-scale foreign aid and expertise for up to 2.4 million people left destitute by Cyclone Nargis.

The details were to be worked out with the United Nations, which announced later on Monday that a donor conference would be held in the cyclone-hit former capital, Yangon, on May 25.

Myanmar agreed to accept nearly 300 medical personnel from its neighbors in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the foreign ministers said in a statement.

A few have already sent teams two weeks after the disaster which left 134,000 dead or missing. But aid workers from outside ASEAN will only be granted visas on a case-by-case basis.

"We have to look at specific needs -- there will not be uncontrolled access," Yeo said after the meeting which named ASEAN chief Surin Pitsuwan to work with the United Nations on aid delivery.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will visit Myanmar on Wednesday, when he plans to visit the country's Irrawaddy delta area which was hit hardest by Nargis, his spokeswoman Michele Montas told reporters.  Continued...