Navy ships likely to leave Myanmar
WASHINGTON (AP) - May 28, 2008 Navy Adm. Timothy Keating, chief of the U.S. Pacific Command,
said Wednesday he would discuss the matter later this week with
Defense Secretary Robert Gates in Singapore, where they will attend
an international security conference.
Keating said the group of ships, led by the amphibious assault
ship USS Essex, has other scheduled commitments in the area,
including a planned port visit to Hong Kong. They happened to have
been in the Gulf of Thailand participating in a naval exercise when
the cyclone struck May 2-3.
"Absent a green light from Burmese officials, I don't think she
will be there for weeks," Keating told a Pentagon news conference,
referring to the Essex. "Days, and then we'll see."
The admiral said the Myanmar authorities' refusal to let the
Navy provide relief aid is frustrating. He described the sailors
and Marines aboard the Essex as "desperate" to provide help.
"If they can't help, they know they have other things that they
joined the Navy and the Marine Corps to do, so they want to get on
with that sort of thing," Keating said. "It is certainly
frustrating to us at Pacific Command. Imagine how much more
frustrating it is to the men and women on the ship."
The admiral said it is not too late for the Navy to contribute
to the relief effort, saying, "We believe there's still a mission
for us."
The Myanmar government has allowed a limited number of U.S. Air
Force C-130s to bring in water and other relief supplies from a
base in Thailand. Keating said 70 such flights have been flown thus
far.
Accompanying the Essex in waters off Myanmar are the USS Juneau,
the USS Harper's Ferry and the USS Mustin. The Essex has 23
helicopters aboard, including 19 capable of lifting cargo from ship
to shore, as well as 1,500 Marines. U.S. officials have proposed
using the helicopters to distribute relief aid from the Rangoon
airport to outlying areas closer to the cyclone victims.
The U.S. vessels have been off the coast since shortly after the
cyclone struck.
The Myanmar government says the cyclone killed 78,000 people and
left 56,000 missing. An estimated 2.4 million people were left in
desperate need of food, shelter and medical care, the United
Nations says.
Keating said that when he flew to Rangoon with the first C-130
ferrying relief supplies from Thailand on May 11 he met with a
high-level delegation of Myanmar civilian and military officials.
He said they expressed appreciation for U.S. offers of more aid but
said they could not make decisions at that point.
The Myanmar officials then spoke positively about the prospects
for recovery from the cyclone, Keating said.
"As to their assessment of the need for those affected by the
storm, it was a much more optimistic assessment than our embassy
officials and our intelligence led us to understand," he said.
"They said people are returning to their villages, they're
planting their summer rotation of crops," and they said the summer
monsoons would wash away the salt water that the cyclone left in
the soil and ponds. "Their estimate was not nearly as grave as
ours," he said.
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