US to Withdraw Naval Vessels from Burma After Aid Refused
Jun 4, 2008 – By VOA News
The U.S. military says it will withdraw its warships from
the waters off Burma after the ruling military government refused to allow
the ships to deliver relief supplies to the victims of last month's deadly
cyclone.
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U.S. Navy Adm. Timothy Keating provides an update on recent relief
operations to Burma and China during a press briefing inside the
Pentagon, 28 May 2008.
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In a statement released Wednesday, Admiral Timothy
Keating, the head of the U.S. Pacific Command, says the USS Essex
and its support ships will leave Burma Thursday. Keating says the ships are
leaving after the U.S. tried and failed more than a dozen times to convince
the Burmese government to change its position.
The admiral says he is "both saddened and
frustrated" to know the U.S. forces could have alleviated "the
suffering of hundreds of thousands of people." Keating says the ships
will return to Burma if the ruling generals change their minds.
The United Nations says about one million Burmese are
still lacking food and water one month after Cyclone Nargis hit, leaving at
least 134,000 people dead or missing.
A spokeswoman for the U.N.'s humanitarian assistance
agency, Elizabeth Byrs, says aid groups have managed to reach 1.3 million
people in the worst hit areas of the Irrawaddy Delta. But she says relief is
still generally spotty and insufficient.
An official with the U.N. Food and Agricultural
Organization, Hiroyuki Konuma, says Burma's farmers have not returned to
Irrawaddy's rice paddies to begin preparing for the upcoming rice planting
season because they lack adequate food and shelter. The official says if rice
planting does not begin soon, Burma would suffer from serious food
shortages.
The FAO says 16 percent of Burma's rice paddy fields were
seriously damaged by the cyclone.
Some information for this report was provided by
AFP, AP and Reuters.
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