Myanmar under pressure to open its borders to aid

By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military government came under pressure on Wednesday to open its borders to more international help after a devastating cyclone that a U.S. diplomat said may have killed more than 100,000 people.

The United States, a vocal critic of the military junta that has ruled the former Burma for more than four decades, said humanitarian access should not be a political matter.

"What remains is for the Burmese government to allow the international community to help its people. It should be a simple matter. It is not a matter of politics," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in Washington.

The top U.N. humanitarian official urged Myanmar to waive visa restrictions for aid workers, which he said were slowing efforts to bring in disaster relief experts and supplies to help an estimated one million people affected by Cyclone Nargis.

The cyclone slammed into coastal towns and villages in the rice-growing Irrawaddy delta southwest of Yangon on Saturday. Witnesses reported entire villages destroyed and people clinging to trees in a desperate fight for survival.

Limited international aid has trickled in and the military junta's own aid operation has moved up a gear with some helicopter drops into the region, but land convoys were nowhere to be seen, said a Reuters witness in the delta.

State Myanmar radio and television, the main official sources for casualties, reported a death toll of 22,980 with 42,119 missing and 1,383 injured in Asia's most devastating cyclone since a 1991 storm in Bangladesh killed 143,000.

The U.N. humanitarian official said the death toll could rise "very significantly." A U.S. diplomat was more specific.