By Ed Cropley BANGKOK, May 24 (Reuters) - It is being dubbed a "pledging conference" but Sunday's international donors' meeting in cyclone-hit Myanmar is going to be more about getting the junta to open its doors than the world to open its wallet. The overwhelming message to the former Burma's ruling generals is that if they want any long-term help, they have to let foreign aid workers and disaster experts into the worst-hit areas to assess the damage for themselves. "Hopefully, this can get them to understand that, yes, there is a mood of solidarity and support in the international community, but that money won't come, and the support won't come, unless they open the door a little bit," one U.N. official said. "The content of it is clearly much broader than a 'pledging conference' in the sense that the sole aim is not to raise money. The aim is to remove the various obstacles to getting assistance to the people," the official said. Much of the fund-raising is likely to centre on the U.N.'s $201 million emergency appeal, which has racked up $57 million. Three weeks after the disaster, junta supremo Than Shwe made what appeared to be a concession in telling visiting United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon that all foreign aid workers, regardless of nationality, would be allowed in. However, even if they are able to travel freely around the storm-ravaged Irrawaddy delta, their findings will be too late to bridge the huge discrepancies in thinking currently between aid agencies and the junta. The two sides appear to be in broad agreement at least on the toll of dead and missing, which the junta raised dramatically to 134,000 a week ago. There is little agreement about anything else. While the generals, via the state-controlled media, stress that the immediate emergency relief phase is over and that reconstruction is now key, the U.N. says help has only got to a quarter of the 2.4 million people affected. Even the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which counts Myanmar among its 10 members and which was instrumental in setting up Sunday's conference, says it is worried about being kept in the dark. The generals have told ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan that they needed $11 billion in reconstruction aid but did not reveal how they came to that figure or say how it would be spent. "The shared concern is we don't know the extent of the damage. We don't know the number of the dead, the number of the missing or the number of the displaced," Surin said. Without some clarity, the international community is unlikely to go signing any cheques. "No country is going to commit to anything until they are in agreement about the facts on the ground," said former British ambassador to Thailand Derek Tonkin, now a Myanmar analyst. "You need to have a proper proposal presented, you need to have facts to work on, and then you can tackle it." (Editing by Darren Schuettler and Bill Tarrant)
China's Premier Wen Jiabao (L) points out a collapsed building to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as they visit the earthquake-hit Yingxiu town in Wenchuan county, Sichuan Province May 24, 2008. Ban ...
