Yangon: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said today that Myanmar 's junta had shown some flexibility over calls for a scaled-up international relief effort after Cyclone Nargis.

"They have shown some signs of flexibility recently," Ban told reporters on his first day in Myanmar, where he made a three-hour helicopter tour of the Irrawaddy Delta region that was hardest hit by the May 2-3 storm.

He said his main concern was to get approval for a major international relief effort from the ruling generals, who have stunned the world by refusing a full-scale aid operation that could save countless lives.

Foreign aid has been flowing into the country, and the junta has agreed to let 10 UN helicopters start working to carry supplies to some of the most remote regions battered by the storm.

But the regime, long suspicious of any outside influences that could weaken its total grip on power, has refused to let most foreign aid workers into the country to help oversee the relief effort.

Ban toured two camps of people who survived the worst natural disaster in the country s history, which the regime says has left almost 1,34,000 people dead or missing.

International aid groups say nearly 2.5 million people are in dire need of emergency aid after the storm, many of them from the delta.

"I am so sorry, but don't lose your hope. The United Nations is here to help you," Ban told one woman at one of the camps.

Making the first trip to this impoverished nation by a UN leader in more than four decades, Ban is scheduled to meet the country 's isolationist military ruler, Senior General Than Shwe, tomorrow.

Source : PTI