UPDATE 2-Thai PM cancels trip to Myanmar over aid workers

(Adds Samak quotes)

By Nopporn Wong-Anan

BANGKOK, May 9 (Reuters) - Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej said on Friday he had cancelled a planned trip to Myanmar this weekend after the junta said it would not welcome foreign aid workers, just hours after he said he would.

"They told me yesterday Prime Minister Thein Sein would be free to see me on Sunday," Samak told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"But after they said today they would not welcome foreign staff, there is no point of me going there," Samak said.

The Myanmar foreign ministry said in a statement carried in official media on Friday that the country would accept foreign aid, but not foreign aid workers.

"Myanmar is not in a position to receive rescue and information teams from foreign countries at the moment," it said after a disaster rescue team from Qatar that arrived in Yangon on an aid flight was turned back.

The statement said Myanmar "is giving priority to receiving relief aid and distributing them to the storm-hit regions with its own resources".

Samak said he had sent a letter via the Thai embassy in Yangon to Thein Sein to ask the Myanmar government to allow the World Food Programme and its staff into the country.