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60,000 Dead or Missing in Burma
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But exiled Burmese political analyst Aung Naing Oo, who fled Burma in 1988 and is now based in Thailand, labeled Laura Bush's attack as "totally and utterly inappropriate."
"She is trying to score political points out of people's disaster," he said. "That will clearly not go down well with anyone in Burma. This is about humanitarian issues -- people are dying. This is a time for the U.S. government to say, 'We are giving you money.' They don't need to score political points here."
Ye Htut, a Burmese government spokesman, also accused the first lady of politicizing the tragedy. "I would like to say that what we are doing is better than the Bush administration response to the Katrina storm in 2005, if you compare the resources of the two countries," he told reporters.
He said the government issued a cyclone warning two days before the storm struck.
In this environment of hostility, the prospect for effective and timely cooperation between the junta and Western governments -- let alone U.S. military personnel deploying on the ground -- remains uncertain.
"At one level, the regime worries that events could move out of their control if they let in Western aid groups, and lose that really tight control that they have had," Turnell said. "But they must also be extraordinarily mindful of the potential that this could cause unrest in the country," he said. "People are already jumping onto the fact that the army was out on the streets so quickly in September and asking, 'Where are they now?' "
Thant Myint-U, a Burmese historian and former U.N. official, said that "the problem is that everything, including aid, has been politicized, with suspicions on all sides." But he noted that "if in response to this tragedy, the aid community and the Burmese authorities can work well together, keep politics entirely away and show that effective and impartial aid delivery is possible, I think that would be a great step forward."
Staff writers Dan Eggen and Philip Rucker in Washington and Colum Lynch in New York contributed to this report.
