Burma is preventing helicopters flying to areas of the southern Irrawaddy River Delta inundated when Cyclone Nargis struck a month ago leaving 2.4 million people needing aid, a United Nations relief official said.

Nine out of the 10 helicopters scheduled to transport supplies are unable to operate because the military junta hasn't allowed them into the country, the UN's IRIN news agency cited Paul Risley, a spokesman for the World Food Programme, as saying in Bangkok yesterday.

Ten weeks after driving peaceful protestors off the streets of Rangoon and other cities, Burma's reclusive and paranoid military dictatorship is taking every precaution needed to perpetuate its jackboot authoritarian rule, including forcing people to grow nuts in a bizarre attempt to influence the pro-democracy opposition.

Visiting envoys have been scoffed at the junta told the nine other memberstates comprising the Association of South East Asian States (ASEAN) that they could not receive a UN briefing on the internal situation on Burma. With the exception of the Philippines, Burma's ASEAN colleagues caved in to the generals, going on to tell the visiting EU Commission delegates that no sanctions were needed against Burma.

Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of one of Burma's most cherished heroes, the martyred General Aung San, who led his country's fight for independence from Great Britain in the 1940s and was killed for his beliefs in 1947. Suu Kyi has equaled her father's heroics with her calm but passionate advocacy of freedom and democracy in the country now called Myanmar, a name chosen by one of the most insensitive and brutal military dictatorships in the world.