The United Nations and Western powers piled more pressure on the military regime to speed up its slow and disorganised response to the disaster by suggesting that helpless victims could have been robbed of food and other urgent supplies.

The reports were unconfirmed, but the relief effort -- further complicated by heavy rains -- is only delivering one tenth of the supplies needed in the devastated delta region, where up to 100,000 people are dead or missing.

"It's just awful, people are in just desperate need, begging as vehicles go past," Gordon Bacon, an emergency coordinator for International Rescue Committee, said.

The international community has flown in tonnes of medicine, food and shelter materials, but getting it to low-lying delta area has been complicated by poor equipment, bad weather and government intransigence.

Myanmar's reclusive junta has also made it very clear it does not want outsiders distributing aid.

Foreign experts in sanitation, nutrition and medicine have either been prevented from entering the country formerly known as Burma or are restricted to the main city of Yangon.

Armed police send back foreigners who attempt to pass through checkpoints surrounding the former capital.

"It's such an immense area of devastation and so many people need help that I'm sure if these people could get in and be coordinated properly it would assist the effort dramatically," said Bacon. "There is frustration all around."

TRAGEDY

The international community has warned of an even greater tragedy if the aid effort is not ratcheted up.

In a statement after emergency talks on Myanmar in Brussels on Tuesday, EU development ministers called on Yangon "to offer free and unfettered access to international humanitarian experts, including the expeditious delivery of visa and travel permits."

The EU ministers stopped short of endorsing a French call to deliver supplies if necessary without the junta's permission.

France's junior minister for human rights said it had the backing of Britain and Germany to call on the UN Security Council for aid to be taken into Myanmar without the government's green light if necessary.

"We have called for the 'responsibility to protect' to be applied in the case of Burma," Rama Yade told reporters.

British officials said London would welcome discussion of the 'responsibility to protect,' a 2005 UN resolution conceived to assist victims of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not natural disasters.

But the official did not consider the proposal realistic given Russian and Chinese objections.

Tens of thousands of people throughout the delta are crammed into monasteries, schools and other buildings after arriving in towns that were on the breadline even before the disaster.