By ANTARA News,
Yangon : UN chief Ban Ki-moon arrived Thursday in Myanmar to press the junta to accept a full-scale relief operation for cyclone survivors, according to an AFP reporter at the airport.
Ban, the first UN chief to visit Myanmar since 1964, is due to meet with senior government officials Thursday morning and then tour the Irrawaddy Delta, which suffered the brunt of the cyclone.
The disaster left more than 133,000 people dead or missing in early May.
On Friday, he is scheduled to fly to the junta’s remote capital Naypyidaw where he will meet with the regime’s reclusive leader Than Shwe, a Myanmar government official said.
The last trip by a UN secretary general was in 1964 by U Thant, a Myanmar national who led the world body when this country was still known as Burma.
Armed police lined the roads leading from the airport, while soldiers busied themselves cleaning the storm-damaged streets of Yangon for the UN head.
Ban was greeted at the airport by Foreign Minister Nyan Win, who then escorted him to the foreign ministry for the first talks of his visit.
After his talks with Nyan Win, the UN chief was expected to pay respects at the Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar’s holiest Buddhist shrine, before continuing with the rest of his meetings and his tour of the delta.
Ban’s high-profile mission is aimed at convincing the junta to accept a major aid effort for the two million people still waiting for food, shelter and medicine after the cyclone.
Myanmar insists that it can deliver aid on its own, but nearly three weeks after the storm hit, residents in remote villages of the delta have told AFP that emergency supplies still have not arrived.