The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Yangon

Efforts to deliver life-saving aid to Myanmar's cyclone victims hit trouble Monday as France turned back a ship laden with supplies, citing its shock at the resistance of Yangon's military regime.

The military vessel carrying 1,000 tonnes of aid for the battered Irrawaddy Delta was instead sent to Thailand to be handed to the World Food Programme for distribution, the French defence and foreign ministries said in a statement.

The move was a further blow to the international community's attempts to help desperate survivors still short of food, water and shelter more than three weeks after Cyclone Nargis hit the country.

The French ship, the Mistral, had been poised to deliver enough aid to help 100,000 people. The ministries said they were "particularly shocked that the Myanmar authorities did not accept that 1,000 tonnes of humanitarian aidt could not be directly unloaded and distributed." "Nothingt can justify the victims of a catastrophe being denied the basic right to the necessary aid," the ministerial statement said late Sunday.