(BRUSSELS) - EU development ministers held an emergency meeting on Myanmar on Tuesday, seeking ways to convince the junta to allow in effective aid for its increasingly desperate cyclone victims.

EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel was to fly to Thailand after the meeting, in the hope of travelling on to Myanmar to push the message that there are no political strings attached to international aid.

"Certainly what we will be saying and the message we hope to get over to the Myanmar authorities is that what began as a natural disaster should not become a man-made or man-driven disaster," a European diplomatic source said.

"What we are trying to do is exactly the same kind of response as we have made for tsunamis, or flooding in Bangladesh or the earthquake in Pakistan," she added.

Another European diplomatic source said the ministers would consider ways of persuading the Myanmar government "that these are purely humanitarian initiatives, and that there is no political agenda behind them".

The hastily arranged meeting of the 27 EU development ministers has three main aims, according to Michel's spokesman John Clancy.

They will seek "better coordination" of the response to the catastrophe, possible new funding and "the problems of the delivery and access to aid," said Clancy.

Myanmar's military rulers on Tuesday rejected growing international pressure to accept aid workers, insisting against all the evidence that it had the emergency cyclone relief effort under control.

"The nation does not need skilled relief workers yet," Vice Admiral Soe Thein said in the New Light of Myanmar newspaper, a mouthpiece for the military which has ruled the nation with an iron grip for nearly half a century.

He said the needs of the people following the storm, which has left around 62,000 dead or missing since ripping through the southern Irrawaddy delta on May 2, "have been fulfilled to an extent".

But aid agencies tell a starkly different story, warning that as every day passes without sufficient food, water and shelter, as many as two million people are at risk of adding to the already staggering death toll.

European leaders have repeatedly appealed to the Myanmar junta to allow a full-scale international aid effort into the country.

Michel said last week that the European Commission could release up to 30 million euros (46 million dollars) or more if Myanmar authorities give greater access to relief teams.

"Hundreds of thousands of human lives are in the balance and a massive international operation is still needed in the Irrawaddy Delta to save those lives. When disaster strikes on this kind of scale, it becomes a matter of global solidarity," he said Sunday.

A first British aid flight was given the green light to leave for Myanmar on Monday as London warned of a "second tragedy" if the country drags its feet over allowing aid in.

"The situation inside Burma is becoming ever more desperate for the hundreds of thousands of people affected by this disaster," said International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander, who was due in Brussels for the meeting with his EU counterparts.

"There is now the very real danger of a second tragedy developing on the back of the first. The risk of water-borne infections grows with every day of inaction by the Burmese authorities," he added.

An emergency air or sea operation to channel disaster relief to Cyclone Nargis victims must be set up in Myanmar to avert a "second catastrophe", a UN humanitarian agency spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Extraordinary Session of General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC) – Development Element

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