Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, plans to dispatch his humanitarian chief to meet Burma's top generals to press the intransigent regime to permit free entry to international aid workers to help survivors of the cyclone disaster.
Few details of the planned mission have emerged. Ban said Sir John Holmes, head of UN humanitarian assistance, would go to Rangoon aboard a World Food Programme flight loaded with aid for the victims of Cyclone Nargis, which struck 13 days ago. The proposed move is a measure of the increasing desperation of the international community forced to largely sit on the sidelines, the vast bulk of the potential aid effort blocked by the regime, steeped in suspicion of outside aid.
The UN and aid agencies on the ground in Burma say more aid is getting into the country, but it is as little as a tenth of that required to meet the needs of 2.5 million people affected by the disaster.
"There are still tens of thousands who have received no aid," said Tim Costello, of World Vision in Rangoon. "We're saving lives. We have to keep working and honour those people who are hanging on."
Like most other aid agencies, World Vision's international disaster experts still await visas. Its three foreign staff inside the country remotely manage the relief effort from Rangoon, now ringed by roadblocks to prevent them reaching the worst-hit Irrawaddy delta where most of the 128,000 people died. The official death toll reached 43,318 last night.
"Around Rangoon there is a political 'electric fence'," said Costello. "To go beyond that you put at risk your whole 'in' with the government, so we don't try. We feel impotent."
Even the aid agencies' Burmese staff working in devastated towns in the delta have been barred by authorities from taking relief to camps and outlying villages.
Care International set up a relief station in Pathein manned by national staff helping the thousands who have flooded into makeshift camps in schools.
But it has had to resort to delivering aid to the camps and the countryside through ad hoc local organisations that have the authorities' clearance, rather than waste more valuable time awaiting permission.
"It's part of our strategic thinking," said Brian Agland, Care's Burma country director. "We're not going to get in for some time."
Lord Malloch-Brown, UK foreign office minister with responsibility for Asia, held high-level talks in Bangkok yesterday to try to find ways to break the logjam.
He met Thailand's foreign minister, Noppadol Pattama, and prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, who returned a day earlier from fruitless talks with the regime. Malloch-Brown wants to convince the Association of south-east Asian Nations to take the lead to get international disaster experts into Burma.
"That's best not done by ourselves," he said. "It should be more through ASEAN and the other Asian neighbours to take a strong role with the backing of the international community ... normal diplomatic process will not do. Lives are at stake."
The need became more pressing yesterday as torrential rains in the Irrawaddy delta compounded the misery. Forecasts predicted an expected 12cm over the coming six days, posing an immense threat to destitute survivors.
"With soil already saturated, with large areas already flooded, this rain could present the worst case scenario imaginable," said Peter Rees of the International Red Cross.
The Burmese regime, which went ahead with the constitutional referendum last weekend despite the cyclone, announced that 92.4% of the 22 million eligible voters approved the draft. Critics said there was widespread intimidation and rigging of the ballot.
Reports have emerged that foreign aid was being sold in markets and the military was pilfering aid for its own use.