YANGON, Myanmar, May 21 (UPI) -- U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, en route to Myanmar, said Wednesday that aid to the stricken country "should not be politicized."
Ban said he hoped to meet Thursday with Senior Gen. Than Shwe to convince him to allow assistance from the United Nations and Western countries, The New York Times reported. He said during a stopover in Bangkok that Myanmar is at a "critical moment" following Cyclone Nargis.
"Aid in Myanmar should not be politicized," Ban said. "Our focus now is on saving lives."
The cyclone claimed thousands of lives, with 100,000 people either listed as dead or missing.
Ban is also scheduled to attend a donors meeting Sunday in Yangon.
The military junta that rules Myanmar, the former Burma, has blocked most aid except from other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The general hasn't even been willing to talk to Ban on the telephone.
"The strings attached to the relief supplies carried by warships and military helicopters are not acceptable to the Myamarese people," the official newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar, said Wednesday. "We can manage by ourselves. Myanmar has many good neighborly countries."
