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The UN's top disaster official John Holmes arrived in Myanmar on Sunday on a three-day visit to convince the reluctant regime to open the doors to a massive relief effort after Cyclone Nargis, reports agency.
He arrived just hours after the latest UN emergency report on the country -- where around two million survivors are lacking food and water more than two weeks after the storm hit -- said needs were still critical.
The international community has been turning up the pressure on the regime over its handling of the tragedy, which has left nearly 134,000 people dead or missing since tearing into the southern Irrawaddy Delta on May 2.
Holmes was carrying a letter from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the head of the junta, Than Shwe. The UN chief has made repeated calls to the military leader but failed to reach him since the tragedy.
The secretive military rulers have been letting more foreign experts into the country in recent days, but aid groups say it is not enough to ensure that victims get the food, water, shelter and medical care they need.
British aid group Save the Children said Sunday that thousands of children could starve to death within weeks, and the latest UN internal report said it was still awaiting government approval to import rice, pulses and oil.
It also warned that time was running out to start planting for the coming rice harvest.
"If this planting season is lost, then assistance will be required for some months to come," the report said.
Holmes was to visit the delta on Monday and hold talks with regime officials, local UN representative Dan Baker told reporters.
The international community has been toughening the rhetoric on the regime, which has limited the access of foreigners with expertise in managing disaster zones, despite warnings they are essential to the relief effort.
South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner have both raised the spectre of crimes against humanity by the junta over its handling of the catastrophe.
Tutu said the regime had "effectively declared war on its own population."
Despite the government's insistence that the relief effort is going well, witnesses who managed to sneak through the security cordon around the hard-hit Irrawaddy Delta said the situation remained dire.
"It was horrible beyond description," said a foreign businessman, one of a bout a dozen eyewitnesses interviewed by AFP.
"Most of the devastated huts looked like they were empty at first glance. But there were actually survivors inside," he said.
"One hut with no roof was full of about 100 people, crouching in the rain. There was no food and no water. Each person had nothing more than the clothes on their bodies, shivering in the cold."
The junta has continued to insist it can handle most of the operation by itself, and state media are full of photos of smiling citizens receiving handouts from generals.
The junta's English-language mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper, on Sunday carried more than two dozen stories praising its own relief efforts.
"Rescue and relief works can be expedited effectively thanks to the measures the government has taken to materialise the relief undertakings as scheduled," it said.
Aid agencies are hoping that Holmes will have some sway on the regime, which keeps an iron grip on one of the poorest and most isolated nations on the planet.
Aid groups say the government cannot possibly handle the tragedy alone, with hundreds of tonnes of supplies and high-tech equipment piling up in warehouses, bottle-necked by logistics and other problems.
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