U.S. calls Myanmar response to cyclone appalling

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Myanmar's response to Cyclone Nargis has been "appalling" and its junta will be responsible for a second disaster if it does not admit more aid and relief workers, a senior U.S. diplomat said on Tuesday.

More than two weeks after the cyclone hit, the military government's failure to provide greater access to the stricken region is putting hundreds of thousands of lives at risk, said Scot Marciel, the U.S. envoy to Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

"The door must be opened far wider -- and rapidly -- to prevent a second catastrophe," Marciel told a congressional hearing on the disaster in the former Burma.

"The Burmese regime's response to this disaster has fallen short of what was required. Frankly, it has been appalling," Marciel told a U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs subcommittee.

The junta gave priority to a "deeply flawed referendum" on an army-drafted constitution days after the storm, rather than focusing on the humanitarian disaster, he said.

"If assistance is not allowed in, and thousands of Burmese perish, the responsibility for this catastrophe will fall squarely on the shoulders of Senior General Than Shwe and other Burmese leaders," he said.

Marciel, who is also a deputy assistant secretary of state, was named earlier this month as the first U.S. ambassador to ASEAN, a regional group of which Myanmar is a member.

He welcomed the group's plans to convene an aid pledging conference on Sunday in Myanmar's capital Yangon, where it will work on a bigger aid delivery plan for Myanmar. Nearly 134,000 are dead or missing and 2.4 million have been left destitute.