Saturday May 17, 2008 MYT 8:51:25 AM

France criticizes Myanmar for refusing to allow navy ship to deliver aid to cyclone victims

UNITED NATIONS (AP): France criticized Myanmar's military junta on Friday for refusing to allow a French navy ship with 1,500 tons of relief supplies for victims of Cyclone Nargis to deliver the food and medicine directly by small boats and helicopters to the devastated Irrawaddy Delta region.

France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said the ship would be in international waters within sight of the Irrawaddy Delta on Saturday, and he warned that the military government's refusal to allow aid to be delivered to people in need or in danger "could lead to a true crime against humanity.''

In Paris, French defense and foreign ministry officials said the FSS Mistral is expected to dock "sometime Saturday.'' A Defense Ministry spokesman said they are "still in negotiations'' about where it will dock and wouldn't comment on whether it would be the capital, Yangon or the delta.

Ripert told reporters that when he got up to speak in the U.N. General Assembly about the government's failure to allow foreigners to deliver aid he was immediately interrupted by Myanmar's U.N. ambassador who accused France of sending "a warship'' to the country.

"I had to intervene to explain that it's not true,'' Ripert said. "It's not a warship, it's a ship on which we have 1,500 tons of food, drugs, medications. We have small boats which could allow us to go through the delta to most of the regions where no one has accessed yet. We have small helicopters to drop food, and we have doctors.''

"As of today the government of Myanmar refused to the French the authorization of using this ship, and asked to us to convey the material through airlift in Rangoon, which of course is a nonsense,'' he said, using the former name of the capital, Yangon. "This is purely unacceptable.''

"We are still trying to convince the authority of Burma to authorize us to go there,'' he said, using Myanmar's former name.

"Hundreds of thousands of lives are in jeopardy and we think that the primary responsibility of the government of Myanmar is to help and open the borders so that the international aid could come into the place,'' Ripert said.

Myanmar's U.N. Mission said Ambassador Kyaw Tint Swe was not available to comment on his remarks to the closed-door meeting of the General Assembly.

France has been in the forefront of pushing for U.N. Security Council authorization to deliver aid to Myanmar, an issue Ripert said he has pressed for every day in the council, so far unsuccessfully. China, Russia, South Africa and some other council members contend that aid to cyclone victims is a humanitarian issue -- not an issue of international peace and security to be dealt with by the U.N.'s most powerful body.

France argues that the council endorsed an agreement by world leaders at a U.N. summit in 2005 that the U.N. has a "responsibility to protect'' people when nations fail to do it. But that agreement referred only to genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

"It's true ... that natural catastrophes were not included because at the time nobody thought that any government would dare to refuse some help to its own population in case of natural catastrophes,'' Ripert said. The ambassador was asked whether France would deliver aid on the ship without the government's permission.

"I cannot answer this question right now,'' he replied. "For the moment, we are in international waters and we are still negotiating with the government.''

At the General Assembly meeting, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that the death toll from the cyclone will increase dramatically unless Myanmar's government allows more aid into the country to help victims at risk of disease.

Ban said he was sending U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes to Myanmar this weekend. Holmes is to deliver a third letter attempting to establish contact with the country's leadership to discuss how the U.N. can assist the government's immediate and long-term relief effort, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said.

Myanmar's leader, Senior General Than Shwe, has refused to take Ban's calls and has not answered two previous letters.

"This morning I saw the latest official figures, which now estimate that 78,000 have died. Countless people are missing,'' Ban told the assembly. "This is a very tragic situation. ... Estimates of those at risk run as high as 2.5 million people.''

"More than two weeks after the event, we are at a critical point,'' Ban warned in the text of his speech which was released by the U.N.

"Unless more aid gets into the country -- quickly -- we face the risk of an outbreak of infectious diseases that could dramatically worsen today's crisis. I want to emphasize that this is not the time for politics. Our concern right now is to save lives -- to help the government of Myanmar and its people,'' he said.

At the meeting, U.S. deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff shared the United States' "disappointment and frustration that greater access had not been granted for international humanitarian workers who are the link to the plethora of aid available,'' U.S. Mission spokesman Richard Grenell said.

Ban also told representatives of the 192 U.N. member states that he hopes a meeting of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations on May 19 and a high-level pledging conference that he has suggested for May 24-25 will help to mobilize resources in response to the disaster in Myanmar -- as was the case in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.

In raising the death toll, Britain's U.N. Ambassador John Sawers said the government is "recognizing that more people have died than they previously admitted, as the U.N. and other observers have suspected for some time.''

"We believe that the death toll is rising still further because aid is not getting through to those who most need it, because there is no international structure to deliver aid on the ground in the affected region,'' he said.

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