(BRUSSELS) - EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel said Tuesday that the Myanmar regime had granted him a visa to enter the cyclone-stricken country and that he would leave Brussels later in the day.

Michel, talking after an emergency meeting of EU development ministers, was due to fly to the Thai capital Bangkok before travelling on to Myanmar for what he stressed was a "strictly humanitarian" mission to convince junta leaders to allow international aid and aid workers unfettered access to the crisis-hit people of the flooded Irrawaddy delta region.

However "here and now, my mission's chances of success are slight," he told AFP.

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