and Emma Batha

Myanmar is coming under increasing pressure to throw open its doors to international aid workers and relief supplies. It is almost a week since Cyclone Nargis slammed into the country yet aid has barely started trickling in.

Agencies say they would normally expect to fly in experts and supplies within 48 hours of a disaster. But few international groups have been able to send reinforcements to Myanmar. Aid workers' experiences of dealing with the fiercely secretive military junta have been mixed.

"It's a big question. Can we do it and can we go to the south?" said Jean-Michel Grand, executive director of Action contre la Faim (ACF) in London.

"It's quite a test for us to see how access is possible, both in terms of logistics like roads and in terms of administration."

Up to 100,000 people are feared dead and 1 million are homeless. The rice-growing Irrawaddy delta region in the south has been devastated, and satellite maps show the coastline has practically disappeared.

Aid agencies are waiting to see whether their international staff will be allowed into Myanmar and whether the junta will let staff already in the country travel to areas they don't have accreditation for. Aid groups don't yet know whether they will be allowed to fly in relief supplies or transport them freely around the country.

Medecins Sans Frontieres, which has worked in Myanmar for 16 years, says it is still waiting for permission to fly in supplies for cyclone survivors.

German agency Malteser International, which has been in Myanmar since 2001, says it hasn't been allowed to go to the delta and its team hadn't even got permission to visit areas around Yangon where it had operated before the cyclone. It said the government had also cancelled travel authorisations that had already been granted.

"A lot of tests are going on," ACF's Grand said. "By the end of the day we'll see if planes are cleared and we'll know tomorrow if people get their visas."

Many international staff who have applied for visas this week at embassies in London, Paris and Bangkok have been told to return on Friday. This is slow for a disaster response, but quicker than usual for Myanmar, aid workers say.

FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT

However, some British agencies said they had received visas very quickly. ShelterBox, which flies emergency aid to disaster zones, said Myanmar had granted them visas after they did a presentation to the embassy in London on Tuesday.

"They were extremely helpful ... we've found the cooperation very favourable. There are a lot of other countries that make it far more difficult." operations manager Lasse Petersen said.

"I think the difference is that we're not politically aligned with anyone or linked with any government so sometimes doors are opened where other organisations seem to struggle a bit."

Myanmar's military authorities have often been criticised in the past for restricting aid groups' operations and the movement of staff.

But Paula Sansom of medical aid agency Merlin said the authorities had not imposed travel restrictions on the agency's staff.

"We've had no problem getting our team down from Yangon to Laputta (in the delta) fairly quickly," said Sansom who left London for Myanmar on Wednesday. "At the moment movement has been possible. We have not faced any problems. Our people are saying that the roads are open and clear so there are no problems there either. I think that's one of the things the government did first."

Nearly 50 aid groups were already operating in Myanmar when the storm struck. Tim Costello, chief executive of World Vision Australia, said these agencies were being given a fairly free hand to provide relief beyond their original mandate.

"The government has been very cooperative in saying you have access, we want to help you," he said from the former capital Yangon. "Clearly it's within parameters. The parameters are that we don't mind food landing as long as outsiders who then stay leave it to the local agencies to deliver."

But he said most of the international aid groups operating in the country were involved in development and needed to bring in people from overseas with experience in relief work. And he said it wasn't necessarily easier for groups to get visas for international staff simply because they were already operational.

Several aid agencies said their Asian staff members were finding it easier to get into Myanmar than colleagues with Western passports.

Aid workers say they will need boats and helicopters to get aid to some areas of the inundated delta. Roads and bridges have been destroyed or are very poor and in many places there have never been roads. Flooding has also cut off many communities. One aid worker in Yangon said it could take days to get to some areas even though the distances were small.

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