U.N. chief to meet key powers, donors on Myanmar

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he will meet with key donor states and Asian powers on Wednesday to discuss what can be done to ease the worsening humanitarian crisis in cyclone-ravaged Myanmar.

The meeting will focus on "what kind of concrete measures we can do from now on," Ban told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Ban said he would meet representatives of ASEAN member states as well as key donor countries. A Western diplomat said the meeting would be at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT) and that among those invited were the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, India, Bangladesh, Australia and Japan.

Ban used unusually strong language on Monday to describe his exasperation with the military junta of the country once known as Burma, speaking of his "immense frustration" at the government's "unacceptably slow" response to the needs of over 1.5 million victims.

Ban made it clear that he remained frustrated with the junta, which continues to deny visas to foreign relief workers nearly two weeks after Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar.

"Even though the Myanmarese government has shown some sense of flexibility, at this time it is far, far too short," he said. "The magnitude of this situation requires much more mobilization of resources and aid workers."

The cyclone swept through Myanmar's heavily populated Irrawaddy delta rice bowl in early May, leaving up to 100,000 people dead or missing, and many of the survivors homeless and hungry.

International aid has amounted to little more than a trickle as Myanmar's generals resist international efforts to open the floodgates to foreign workers and their operations and equipment.