The United States likely will decide “within days” to move four U.S. Navy ships that have been waiting off the coast of Burma for permission from the country’s ruling military junta to provide help to cyclone-stricken residents, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today.
“No decision has been made at this point, but they obviously have been out there steaming around in circles for a long time,” Gates told reporters during the final day of an Asia security conference here. “At this point, it is becoming pretty clear that the regime is not going to let us help.”
Gates expressed frustration that the junta repeatedly has refused to allow a group of ships led by the USS Essex to deliver relief supplies at a port and use their helicopters to deliver them to those in need.
Emphasizing that the United States has made no less than 15 direct overtures to the Burmese asking for permission to help, Gates said it may be time to accept “no” as the answer.
So far, the Burmese have allowed 95 U.S. C-130 relief flights into Rangoon, but Gates called it a drop in the bucket of what’s available and what’s needed. The only way to get that aid to the remote Irawaddy Delta that’s been hardest hit by the cyclone is with helicopters, he noted.
The only alternative would be for the international community to band together to intervene by force – something Gates said he saw no interest in from any of the 27 nations represented at the three-day Asia Security Summit. “There literally was not a single country or minister that expressed any interest whatsoever in trying to provide this assistance forcibly,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chinese Lt. Gen. M.A. Xiatian, deputy chief of general staff for the People’s Liberation Army, expressed deep appreciation at the same forum to countries who had come to his country’s aid after a deadly earthquake. “The contrast was pretty stark,” Gates said.
