Aid workers ready for action after Myanmar promise

By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - Foreign aid workers headed for the cyclone-ravaged Irrawaddy delta on Monday to see whether army-ruled Myanmar will honour a promise made by its top general to give them freedom of movement.

"We're going to head out today and test the boundaries," one official from a major Western relief agency told Reuters in Yangon shortly before his departure for a region that has been off-limits to nearly all foreigners since the May 2 cyclone.

Thousands of beggars were lined up along the roads of the delta, where the storm left 134,000 people dead or missing and another 2.4 million clinging to survival.

Droves of children shouted "Just throw something" at passing vehicles. But police told drivers and volunteer donors not to give them anything as they were "just begging".

"Go directly to where you want to go. Don't throw anything from the car. Know your own people," they shouted at the cars at one checkpoint on the way to the devastated town of Bogalay.

Three weeks after the disaster, there are still many villages that have received no outside help and waterways of the former Burma's "rice bowl" remain littered with animal carcasses and corpses, either grotesquely bloated or rotting to the bone.

The stench of death is widespread, as are the swarms of flies.

Donors pledged nearly $50 million (25.3 million pounds) in aid at a landmark conference on Sunday but Western countries said much of the cash would be contingent on access to the delta.