U.N. worried aid may not reach Myanmar victims

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations is worried that some of the aid intended for victims of a deadly cyclone in Myanmar might have been diverted but has no hard proof this has occurred, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a regular news conference, spokeswoman Michel Montas was asked if the United Nations was concerned that some of the aid sent to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, might be going to people who were not victims of Cyclone Nargis.

"That concern exists," she said. "We don't have any independent report of a specific portion of the aid going to other sectors besides the victims (but) it is a fact that a very small percentage of victims have so far received the aid."

In Myanmar, heavy rains on Tuesday pelted homeless cyclone survivors in the country's Irrawaddy delta, complicating the already slow delivery of aid to more than 1.5 million people facing hunger and disease.

As more foreign aid trickles in, critics have been ratcheting up the pressure on its military rulers to accelerate a relief effort that is only delivering an estimated one tenth of the supplies needed in the devastated delta.

One Yangon businessman who returned from a personal aid mission to Bogalay, a delta township where at least 10,000 people were killed, told Reuters that soldiers were appropriating aid.

"There are still some villages in the worst-hit areas that nobody has got to," the man, in his late 30s, said. "Around Bogalay, private donors are not allowed to distribute their assistance to the victims themselves. We had to hand over what we had."

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke on Monday of his "immense frustration" at the junta's "unacceptably slow response" to the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar. In his most critical comments on Myanmar to date, he urged the junta to lift all restrictions on foreign relief workers.