Foul Weather Adds to Burma Misery

2 U.S. Planes Deliver Much-Needed Supplies, but Additional Flights Have Not Been Approved

BANGKOK, May 13 -- As yet more drenching rain battered survivors of Burma's deadly cyclone, foreign relief supplies continued to arrive Tuesday at a pace aid workers said was still far too slow to help most of the suffering.

Two U.S. cargo planes Tuesday delivered supplies including drinking water, blankets and mosquito netting, a day after the first U.S. aid flight to Burma, which included a high-level military and diplomatic delegation.

As of Tuesday evening, no further American flights had received approval from Burma's military government, despite intense international pressure to move quickly to approve visas for aid workers and accept new shipments. U.S. officials said there were indications further flights could take off in coming days.

The government of Burma, also known as Myanmar, raised its tally of the cyclone dead to 34,273, along with 27,838 who are missing. But the death toll estimates of diplomats and aid groups range far higher, to 100,000 or more.

Because aid supplies have yet to reach much of the heavily populated Irrawaddy Delta, where the cyclone struck first and hardest, health experts warn that more than a million Burmese are at risk of disease and starvation.

Forecasts suggest that foul weather could continue for much of this week, complicating relief efforts that have been hamstrung by the country's damaged roads and lack of logistical equipment, in addition to the government's intransigence.

New voices Tuesday joined the chorus of world leaders imploring Burma's ruling junta to accept more international help.

European Union development ministers called on "the authorities in Myanmar to offer free and unfettered access to international humanitarian experts, including the expeditious delivery of visa and travel permits" and "to facilitate the flow of aid to people in desperate need, who should benefit in full from the relief offered by the international community."

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, whose country dispatched a cargo plane Tuesday laden with 31 tons of relief supplies, told a session of Parliament that "the response of the regime in Burma to this crisis has been absolutely callous and those paying the price of this callousness have been the long-suffering Burmese people."

The United States has offered to reassign for disaster relief some of the 11,000 troops currently training in Thailand, and has dispatched three warships full of supplies to international waters off Burma's southwestern coast. American officials have alternately condemned the Burmese government's response to the crisis and urged critics to be patient.

Meanwhile, others have suggested that with 11 days having passed since the cyclone struck, the time for patience is running out. France's junior minister for human rights, Rama Yade, told reporters in Brussels that if the Burmese government continues to bar aid, France, Britain and Germany will soon press the United Nations to authorize shipments without permission, under a rarely invoked principle of international relations called "responsibility to protect."