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YANGON - MYANMAR will not accept cyclone aid carried by US naval ships because the relief supplies come with 'strings attached,' official media said on Wednesday.
But Myanmar's military government remains willing to accept other forms of aid that US military aircraft have been flying into the country, the official New Light of Myanmar newspaper said.
'The strings attached to the relief supplies carried by warships and military helicopters are not acceptable to the Myanmar people. We can manage by ourselves,' said the paper, a junta mouthpiece.
'Myanmar has many good neighbourly countries. The people remain united in times of emergency. Now, we have achieved success in the relief and rehabilitation tasks to a certain degree,' it said.
The United States and France have ships laden with emergency supplies, which the authorities have refused to allow to sail near the worst-hit regions of Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta.
The United Nations estimates that only 500,000 of the 2.4 million affected by the storm are receiving international aid, more than two weeks after Cyclone Nargis left 133,000 dead or missing.
The paper dismissed reports that survivors were not receiving adequate aid as 'rumour storms created by certain western countries and national traitors ... who are showing negative attitude to our nation and people.'
'Our country is going through a variety of storm-like plots and intrigues that are much severer than Nargis, and they are endless,' it said.
The paper also praised the 'relief and rehabilitation tasks being carried out with might and main and tenacity at the risk of lives,' while thanking the United States for the airlifted relief supplies.
So far, Myanmar has refused to allow a major international relief effort, although the junta has agreed for Southeast Asian nations to coordinate a disaster response.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is to go to Myanmar on Thursday to press the generals to speed up the aid effort.
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