UNITED NATIONS, May 27 (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Tuesday it had raised roughly 60 percent of its initial $200 million target for aid for cyclone-ravaged Myanmar, where aid workers were now experiencing fewer access problems. "We've reached just over a million people with some kind of aid," U.N. humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes told reporters. The United Nations estimates that some 2.4 million people in Myanmar are in urgent need of help. Speaking about Sunday's pledging conference in Yangon, he said the United Nations had raised some $119 million, around 60 percent of its initial target for victims of Cyclone Nargis. From that perspective, Sunday's pledging conference could be deemed "a success," he said. Holmes said that Myanmar's national relief effort, which includes bilateral aid from some individual countries, had probably reached another "several hundred thousand more or even a million." However, he was unable to give exact figures. "There's still a lot of people out there who have received nothing or certainly not enough," he said. The military junta of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, promised U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last week that it would allow all legitimate foreign aid workers access to victims across the country. Holmes said he did not know if all roadblocks had been removed, though he said the situation was clearly better. "It's a much freer position that it was, say, a week ago," Holmes said. He added that the U.N. relief workers had so far seen no signs any major outbreaks of diseases. "There are diarrheal diseases around which are being monitored very carefully," Holmes said. "We haven't heard anything that alarms us yet." (Reporting by Louis Charbonneau and Megan Davies, editing by Cynthia Osterman)
An aerial view shows houses submerged by quake lakes near Beichuan County, Sichuan Province May 26, 2008. China planned to dynamite rock, mud and rubble forming a dangerously large "quake lake", ...
