Most reports on Cyclone Nargis, Myanmar's biggest natural disaster in years, make pretty dry reading. But not so, the latest U.N. offering which looks more like a glossy coffee-table book.

Cyclone Nargis: A Diary of Humanitarian Response, launched by the World Food Programme (WFP) on Tuesday, gives a dramatic insight into what it was like to deliver aid in one of the world's most secretive countries.

"This is an attempt to be able to give more of a personalised view on the work that we do," said Chris Kaye, WFP's country director and acting U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator when the storm hit last year, killing around 140,000 people.

"We have our standard reports for donors. They are very dry and technical. This book provides much more of a human face."

With emotive photos in black and white and colour, a slick layout and a landscape format, it certainly doesn't look like your average aid agency report.

Chronicling the first three months of WFP's emergency response in week-by-week entries, it provides vivid accounts of the operation, especially the behind-the-scenes efforts to convince Myanmar's reclusive regime that international help was a necessity.

There are fascinatingly candid notes too, like the entry on June 7 recounting how the government requested WFP to "cease bringing in emergency rations of high-energy biscuits; according to the authorities, people in Myanmar do not eat biscuits".

Mostly though, it is a record of how WFP staff battled heavy monsoon rains, geographical problems, fluctuating populations in villages and ever-changing (and sometimes ludicrous) restrictions to bring aid to survivors.

WFP, which published a similar book after the 2004 tsunami, said it wanted to emphasise the contribution of its national staff.

The junta, highly wary of the outside world, refused to let in most foreign aid workers and international relief for three weeks after the cyclone struck on May 2-3, leaving 2.4 million destitute in the Irrawaddy Delta and the Yangon area.

In the immediate aftermath, the U.N. food agency moved local staff from other parts of the country into the Delta while international experts waited in Bangkok for visas or remained stuck in the head office in Yangon.

"The response to Nargis was very peculiar by virtue of the restrictions that were placed on us by the government and the reliance and the responsibility that was taken by our national staff was extraordinary," said Kaye.

The Irrawaddy Delta, known as the country's rice bowl, was considered food sufficient before the Category 3 cyclone. Problems with soil salinity, loss of livestock and heavy infrastructure damage have left the population in debt and out of work.

Kaye said the agency will continue to provide food to 250,000 people until the end of the year and "much hinges on the effectiveness of current monsoon paddy crop" whether the programme will continue into 2010.

"But it's also about access to food," Kaye said. "There's a lot of food around, but people don't have the money to be able to pay for it."

Reuters AlertNet is not responsible for the content of external websites.