PEACE & SECURITY | Creating a more stable world
02 June 2008
Navy Will Withdraw Rejected Relief Supply Ships from Burma
United States has flown 95 relief flights into Rangoon
Washington -- The United States will soon withdraw four U.S. Navy ships that have been stationed off the coast of Burma to provide much-needed humanitarian relief supplies to Cyclone Nargis survivors.
"It's becoming pretty clear that the regime there is not going to let us help," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said June 1 in Singapore. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who joined Gates at an East Asian security conference, said the Burmese military junta had given permission for 95 U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo planes to bring in relief supplies to the international airport in Rangoon in the aftermath of the storm.
Those relief flights have taken in more than 1.5 million pounds of supplies, mostly food, water, mosquito netting and plastic sheeting for shelters, Mullen said. At least 135,000 people have died or are missing since the cyclone struck Burma on May 2 and 3. The United Nations estimates that 2.4 million survivors face hunger and homelessness.
Both said the personnel aboard the four Navy ships could bring in relief supplies to even the remotest regions that were struck a month ago when Cyclone Nargis slammed into the Irrawaddy Delta region.
"Our ships and aircraft awaited country approval so they could act promptly to save thousands of lives -- approval of the kind granted by Indonesia immediately after the 2004 tsunami and by Bangladesh after a fierce cyclone just last November," Gates said during the Shangri-La Dialogue, a security conference sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "We worked with both nations to alleviate suffering while fastidiously respecting their sovereignty."
Gates said the United States remains poised to offer more help in saving lives. "Indeed, we have shown in recent weeks our determination to give our entire support to save lives, using every channel to get relief to victims," he said.
At the security conference, defense ministers from 27 nations unanimously opposed any effort to violate Burmese sovereignty by forcibly providing relief supplies. "There is great sensitivity all over the world to violating a country's sovereignty, particularly in the absence of some kind of U.N. umbrella that would authorize it," Gates said, according to news reports.
The U.N. World Food Programme said it has distributed a first round of rice to about 575,000 people, far less than those who need it because food distribution efforts are not reaching survivors in more remote areas. The United Nations estimates that more than 58 percent of survivors have not received any relief assistance.
