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The US has ordered its four Pacific fleet warships, packed with supplies for Burma’s cyclone survivors, to end their fruitless wait for permission from the Burmese junta to join in the international relief mission.

The ships, headed by the aircraft carrier USS Essex, will head for neighboring Thailand from the position they have been maintaining for the past three weeks in international waters off the Burmese coast, the Pacific fleet commander, Adm Timothy J Keating, announced.

USS Essex, center, and the Essex Amphibious Ready Group steam in formation, in the Andaman Sea. The US military ordered the navy ships loaded with relief aid off Burma's coast to leave the area Thursday after Burma's junta refused to give them permission to help survivors of last month's devastating cyclone. (Photo: AP/US Navy)

In a press statement released at the US air base in Utaphao, Thailand, Keating said: “I am both saddened and frustrated to know that we have been in a position to help ease the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people and help mitigate further loss of life, but have been unable to do so because of the unrelenting position of the Burmese military junta.”

Keating said he and American officials had made at least 15 attempts to persuade the Burmese regime to allow the US ships, helicopters and landing craft to carry relief supplies to the cyclone victims—“but they have refused us each and every time. It is time for the USS Essex group to move on to its next mission.”

The US ships, carrying more than 5,000 military personnel, including marines, had been taking part in a naval exercise in Thai waters before being ordered to join in the international effort to take relief supplies to cyclone survivors in the Irrawaddy delta and Rangoon Division.

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The US “mercy fleet” of four vessels also carried 22 helicopters, including aircraft capable of heavy loads, and four landing craft.

A French ship that also joined the seaborne relief mission shortly after the cyclone hit sailed for Thailand last week and unloaded their supplies at the holiday island of Phuket.

The US and French readiness to bring aid to cyclone victims within hours of receiving orders to do so sparked a debate in the highest government, diplomatic and academic circles over the legality and advisability of launching a unilateral humanitarian intervention, over the opposition of the Burmese regime and its allies.

Michael Charney, of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, said the US was reluctant to anger countries like China and India, who were not only allies of Burma but eyed that country’s natural resources.

“Beijing’s happiness is much more important to US political leaders than the wellbeing of Burmese villagers,” Charney said.

Even if the US had wanted to act unilaterally to help the cyclone victims, it would have been unable to do so because its military resources were already overcommitted, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, Charney said. “It could not handle yet another military crisis, one so far from the Persian Gulf.”

Charney said the US also risked angering Burma’s partners in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, “for all its [Asean’s] recent criticism of the ruling junta.”

Mikael Gravers, an expert on Burma at Aarhus University in Denmark, commented:
“Humanitarian intervention is a very difficult question.