US ships to leave cyclone-hit Myanmar
The US Navy said they would withdraw the four ships - carrying helicopters, amphibious vehicles and water purifying equipment - from off the coast after repeated attempts to convince the regime to let them in.
"But they have refused us each and every time. It is time for the USS Essex group to move on to its next mission," Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of US Pacific Command, said in a statement.
"I am both saddened and frustrated to know that we have been in a position to help ease the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people and help mitigate further loss of life, but have been unable to do so because of the unrelenting position of the Burma military junta," he added.
Cyclone Nargis left more than 133,000 people dead or missing as it ploughed across the country formally known as Burma about a month ago, laying waste to vital farmlands and wiping villages off the map.
The United Nations estimates that of the 2.4 million survivors in need of food and shelter, 1.1 million of them have not received any foreign aid.
Many of those people live in the remote and isolated delta area, which is inaccessible by road in impoverished Myanmar.
For the first three weeks after the storm, the ruling generals stonewalled international efforts to deliver aid, yielding only after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon paid a personal visit here to meet junta leader Than Shwe.
Foreign relief groups, who struggled for weeks to even get staff into the country, let alone into the worst-hit areas, are seeing small gains but say it is far from enough.
France Hurtubise, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said six of their foreign staff will enter the ravaged Irrawaddy Delta area for the first time on Wednesday.
"For the tsunami we had 300 expats in within the first month - compare 300 to six," she said, referring to the 2004 disaster which killed 220,000 people around the Indian Ocean.
Aid agencies also complain that staff is only being given permission to travel to the hard-to-reach delta for one week at a time, while getting that permission in the first place is a lengthy process.
"We're happy that we're seeing people getting into the field, but we're not overly joyful," Hurtubise told AFP.
"People are in very remote islands. If we don't have enough boats, those people will remain without any help," she added.
The UN's World Food Programme has said that helicopters are also now needed to reach the final survivors in the remotest regions.
But the one WFP helicopter in the country was only given permission to leave Yangon on Monday, despite having been ready to fly for eight days.
Nine more helicopters are sitting on the tarmac in Thai airports. They are due to fly into Myanmar later this week, but it remains unclear if and when they will be allowed into the delta.
Paul Risley, the WFP's regional spokesman, said it was "truly unfortunate" that the US ships and helicopters had to leave.
"Important heavy-lifting capability in the delta would have been a standard operating procedure for relief agencies in the response," he told reporters.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned Sunday that more people would die unless the junta changed tack, and aid workers say all aspects of the relief operation need to be scaled up to reach the needy.
"(We) need far greater access in terms of visas and in terms of more access to the delta area," said UN spokeswoman Amanda Pitt.