Nations and aid groups met on Sunday to discuss billions of dollars for cyclone-hit Myanmar, which is welcoming donations but baulking at foreign aid workers to supervise how and where the money is spent.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is co-hosting the meeting, where Myanmar is expected to ask for $10.7 billion, just two days after announcing what could be a breakthrough deal with the military junta to allow in outside relief workers.

Young children from the village of Chaung Lin receive food thrown from a boat by locals on May 23 in the isolated area of Kanzeik in the Irrawaddy Delta region, Myanmar.

But the secretive nation, ruled by Senior General Than Shwe, has a long history of not keeping its international promises--and donors want to ensure aid actually gets to 2.4 million desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis.
“I will make clear in unequivocal terms the responsibility of the Burmese regime to allow the unfettered access that the international community wants to see,“ said Douglas Alexander, Britain’s top international development official.
He told AFP before attending the meeting that the focus would be “both the continuing humanitarian crisis and the continuing need for access to address it.“

Casualties
The storm left 133,000 people dead or missing, and aid groups have warned that more people will die without urgent supplies of food, clean water, shelter and medicines. The European Union’s top aid official has warned of a famine.
But the junta has kept foreign aid workers waiting in neighboring Thailand without visas, sealed off the Irrawaddy Delta disaster zone to outsiders, and called citizens who said they had not yet got emergency aid “traitors.“
Entire villages in the delta were swept away in the storm, and reporters who have slipped past police roadblocks into the region say the situation is desperate, with countless thousands of victims short of food and other essentials.

Rotting Corpses
Fields in the heart of the country’s rice-growing region were left in ruins, and there are still corpses rotting in canals weeks after the storm hit. But the junta insists the relief effort is finished and rebuilding can begin.
The UN’s Ban said on Friday he had won agreement from Than Shwe to let in all foreign aid workers, with experience managing relief work in disaster areas, and give them access to the delta to make an assessment and oversee efforts.
But state media in the tightly controlled nation, run by the military for 46 years, have issued no confirmation of that agreement--while there are also concerns that money pledged and aid delivered will not go to those who need it.
“This regime is actually trying to use the human devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis as a cash cow,“ said Debbie Stothard of the Alternative ASEAN Network, an activist group on Southeast Asian affairs.
Her group is a response to ASEAN, the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes Myanmar and is the other co-host of the meeting in the main city Yangon.
The United Nations and ASEAN reportedly already have approval to supervise the relief operation, and will present the details of how that will work at Sunday’s conference.
Myanmar has already given aid groups presentations to explain why it needs nearly $11 billion to repair thousands of houses, hospitals, schools and rice fields destroyed in the storm. It has given unusually precise figures--it said that the storm killed 136,804 water buffalo and 1,250,194 chickens--but donor nations are expected to demand more access and oversight before cash is delivered.
The half-day conference is also being attended by dozens of governments and international relief organizations, including Myanmar’s most powerful ally China.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi was representing Beijing, which is widely seen as the staunchest defender of the Myanmar generals who have enraged the world with their response to the May 2-3 disaster.

Barack Obama ratcheted up criticism of Republican John McCain, comparing him with the unpopular Bush administration and continuing an effort to make the former war hero’s opposition to a college aid bill for military veterans a campaign issue, AP said.
On Saturday, Obama appealed to military veterans, saying while campaigning in Puerto Rico that he cannot understand why McCain opposes legislation that would provide college scholarships to people who have served in the US military. Puerto Rico holds its primary on June 1, but does not vote in the general election.
McCain’s campaign was quick to respond, “While Barack Obama engages in the same tired partisan politics that has failed our veterans time and again, John McCain has offered legislation that will expand needed education benefits for veterans while promoting retention in our armed forces,“ McCain spokesman Brian Rogers responded Saturday to Obama’s remarks.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said Saturday he has received “calls“ from some Marxist FARC rebel leaders who claimed they were ready to hand themselves over and free hostages, including Franco-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, AFP said.
In a potentially major breakthrough, just after Colombia confirmed the death of FARC leader Manuel Marulanda, Uribe said “the government has received calls from the FARC in which some of the leaders announced their decision to leave the FARC and hand over Ingrid Betancourt if their freedom is guaranteed.
“The government’s answer is ’yes, they are guaranteed freedom’“ if they handed over hostages, Uribe said.
In a speech carried live on national television, Uribe said those leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) who free the captives could be turned over to authorities from “France, so that they enjoy that freedom there.“

Jean-Pierre Bemba, formerly vice president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, was in custody in Belgium Sunday after being arrested on a war crimes warrant from the International Criminal Court, AFP reported.
“Jean-Pierre Bemba was arrested at around eight in the evening in a Brussels suburb,“ ICC prosecutor Beatrice Le Fraper told AFP late Saturday. “We are waiting for Belgian authorities to order his transfer to the ICC,“ in The Hague, she added.
Bemba was arrested on a warrant that listed four charges of war crimes and two of crimes against humanity, all allegedly committed in the Central African Republic.
Although the arrest warrant was originally issued on May 16, Bemba had no warning of it because it had not been made public.“The warrant of arrest for Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo is the first warrant issued in the situation in the Central African Republic,“ said a statement from the ICC posted on its website.

Authorities invited leaders of one of India’s lowest castes for talks as the death toll rose to 37 on Sunday from three days of bloody demonstrations over caste classification, AFP said.
Police repeatedly opened fire on violent protests by the Gujjar community on Friday and Saturday in half a dozen villages and towns in western Rajasthan state.
The Gujjars are seeking to reclassify their caste to a lower level, which would allow them to qualify for government jobs and university places reserved for such groups. The government has refused.
The Hindu caste system--a hereditary social strata--was outlawed soon after India’s independence from Britain in 1947, but its influence remains powerful and the government awards aid packages to different groups.
Police in Sikandra town fired at protestors who torched a police station and two buses on Saturday and shot and wounded a policeman, said Amanjit Singh Gill, Rajasthan’s director-general of police.
Protestors also burned down a police station in the nearby village of Chandra Guddaji, Gill said.