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The U.S. intensified diplomatic efforts on Monday to persuade Burma's ruling junta to accept international offers of help in tackling the country's humanitarian crisis. Washington entered into some of the most high-level discussions that it has conducted with Burmese officials in decades.
But although a US military flight landed in Burma carrying provisions for the survivors of cyclone Nargis, the flow of emergency supplies remained at a trickle for the 1.5m people facing hunger and disease in the ravaged Irrawaddy delta.
In New York, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, said only a tenth of the food vital to the survival of those affected by the cyclone had so far reached Burma and rice stocks in the country were close to exhaustion.
Expressing his frustration with the junta, he said: "We are at a critical point. Unless more aid gets into the country very quickly, we face an outbreak of infectious diseases that could dwarf today's current crisis.
"I call, in the most strenuous terms, on the government of Myanmar [Burma] to put its people's lives first. It must do all it can to prevent this disaster from becoming even more serious."
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