YANGON, MYANMAR - MYANMAR tightened access to the cyclone disaster zone Wednesday, turning back foreigners and ignoring pleas to accept the outside experts who could save countless lives before time runs out.

International aid groups held an urgent meeting in neighbouring Thailand, frustrated by a defiant regime that has held up visas for emergency workers to deliver food, water, medicine and shelter for up to two million people.

They said they were working on unconventional relief plans in the face of the restrictions, as hope faded that the secretive generals who have long distrusted the outside world would make an exception in the face of disaster.

'Maybe we should already be looking at rebuilding projects instead of emergency relief,' said Mr Chris Lom of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) after the talks in Bangkok.

'There's been an opportunity lost,' Mr Lom said. 'In terms of immediate response, maybe we're too late for that.'

Even though the secretive generals may never allow the true scale of the catastrophe to become known, the regime itself says 62,000 people are dead or missing - and there are dire shortages of the basics of everyday life.

The aid groups say that while tonnes of aid is flowing in - five more US aid flights arrived on Wednesday - only experienced disaster specialists can make a vast international relief operation work.

Mr Mike Pattison, a logistics official from World Vision awaiting a visa in Thailand, said non-specialists could not set up large water purification systems or choose sites for food warehouses that can be defended in riots.

'You can't just put these things into a community and let people operate it themselves,' he said.

The military, which has ruled the country with an iron hand for almost half a century, has long feared any outside influence that could weaken its tight control of virtually every aspect of everyday life.

For days, state-run television has neglected the grim scenes of despair from the ruins of the southern Irrawaddy delta, instead broadcasting footage of generals handing out water and food to grateful citizens.

Anger mounts at Myanmar aid visa delays

A furious rescue worker accused Myanmar's military junta on Monday of crimes against humanity for refusing to give visas to aid officials desperate to enter the country to help the 1.5 million survivors of Cyclone Nargis.

'They say they will call, but it's always wait, wait, wait,' Mr Pierre Fouillant of the Comite de Secours Internationaux, a French disaster rescue agency, said after being turned away from the former Burma's embassy in the Thai capital.

'I've never seen delays like this, never,' said Mr Fouillant, a veteran of 10 humanitarian disasters.

'It's a crime against humanity. It should be against the law. It's like they are taking a gun and shooting their own people.'

Like dozens of others, Mr Fouillant applied on Thursday for a business visa, his only option since the military-ruled and isolated southeast Asian nation has no such thing as an 'emergency aid worker' visa.

The embassy was closed on Friday for a Thai holiday, and on Saturday and Sunday. It opened as normal on Monday morning.

Foreign journalists said they were turned back at stricter roadblocks on the way to the delta Wednesday, and even citizens were not allowed in if they could not provide exact names and addresses of people they said they were visiting.

Tourists were pulled off public buses, and one police officer said the ban on the region - hardest hit when Cyclone Nargis barrelled into the country overnight on May 2 - was total.

'Foreign tourists are not allowed into any part of the Irrawaddy division,' the officer said.

The United Nations said there were worries that the aid pouring into the country, formerly known as Burma, was being diverted from those who needed it most.

'That concern exists,' said a spokesman for UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej and the European Union's Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel arrived in Myanmar's main city of Yangon to try to convince the generals to let the aid effort go to full speed.

But while the regime insists it has managed to get aid to almost all of the affected areas, survivors tell a different story.

Reporters who have made it to the delta relate scenes of almost unimaginable misery and despair.

Untold numbers of corpses have been left rotting in ground that is little more than a saltwater swamp, thousands of hungry people are begging in the streets, and most rice stocks are soaked and ruined.

'The rice we got is already wet from the rain. It's not very good to eat,' 22-year-old Thin Thin told a reporter who made it to one of the remote delta regions. -- AFP, REUTERS