YANGON, MYANMAR - FOREIGN aid workers were heading for the cyclone-ravaged Irrawaddy delta to see whether army-ruled Myanmar will honour a promise made by its top general to give them freedom of movement.

'We're going to head out today and test the boundaries,' one official from a major Western relief agency in Yangon on Monday shortly before his departure for a region that has been off-limits to nearly all foreigners since the May 2 cyclone.

Donors pledged nearly US$50 million (S$68 million) in aid to the former Burma on Sunday but Western countries said much of the cash would be contingent on access to the delta, where 134,000 people are dead or missing and another 2.4 million clinging to survival.

Besides denying and delaying visas to aid officials, military checkpoints on roads leading out of Yangon have prevented all but a handful leaving the former capital.

However, junta supremo Than Shwe promised visiting United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon last week that all aid officials and disaster assessment teams would be allowed in 'regardless of nationalities'.

Given the army's reputation for breaking its word during the 46 years it has held power, the reaction was cautious from aid agencies and countries such as the United States, which regards Myanmar as an 'outpost of tyranny'.

Washington told the Yangon conference it was ready to raise its offer of US$20.5 million in aid if the junta opened up, but added it was 'dismayed' the generals went ahead with a constitutional referendum in the middle of the disaster.

The re-imposition, expected in the next couple of days, of a rolling, year-long house arrest order for opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is only likely to rile the Bush administration further.

Increasing the frustrations of aid agencies and governments, the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok was closed on Monday after a fire caused extensive damage to one building in the compound. Thai police said the blaze did not appear to be suspicious.

'Only the monks help us'

Three weeks after Cyclone Nargis hit, the situation in many parts of the delta is still dire.

'We are homeless. Every time something goes wrong we get help only from the monks,' said a woman sheltering in a Buddhist monastery in Kyauktan, only 20km outside Yangon.

The United Nations says three in four of those most in need have yet to receive any help - and that hunger and disease could send the death toll soaring if things do not change fast.

The junta, by contrast, says the relief phase of the disaster is already over, and is angling for US$11 billion in long-term reconstruction assistance. Diplomats say they don't know how the the government arrived at that figure.

Prime Minister Thein Sein thanked the 500 delegates from 50 countries for the help so far given, and said more would be welcome as long as it came from 'genuine goodwill' and 'provided that there are no strings attached nor politicisation involved'.

China and some other Asian countries said it was important to keep aid and politics separate in dealing with a regime that has defied all pressure to loosen its vice-like grip on power.

The disaster, one of the worst cyclones ever to hit Asia, has forced the reclusive generals to talk to the outside world but they have managed only in part to overcome their innate distrust of anything foreign.

In particular, there appears to be no chance of the generals ever allowing United States and French navy ships near the delta to deliver aid directly to survivors, either by boat or helicopter.

France said on Sunday it had ordered its ship, Le Mistral, to head for Thailand, where its cargo of 1,000 tonnes of drugs, food and tents will be unloaded into the care of the World Food Programme (WFP).

The United Nations agency has won permission to operate 10 chartered civilian helicopters to airlift aid into the delta. The Australian military will fly two of that fleet from South Africa to Bangkok and then on to Myanmar, it said in a statement. -- REUTERS