Indian meteorologists say that they gave authorities in neighbouring Burma 48 hours warning before a cyclone slammed into the country, killing as many as 60,000 people.

The comments from Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) came after allegations from Laura Bush, the US First Lady, that Burma's military junta failed to warn its citizens of the impending storm.

“Forty-eight hours before (tropical cyclone) Nargis struck, we indicated its point of crossing (landfall), its severity and all related issues to Myanmarese agencies,” B.P. Yadav, an IMD spokesman, said.

The department is mandated by the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organisation to track cyclones in the region. “Our job is to give warnings and in advance, and we take pride in saying that we gave warnings much, much in advance and there was enough time to take precautionary measures such as evacuation,” Mr Yadav added.

He said that starting in late April, the weather department was issuing regular advisories to Burma and other South and Southeast Asian countries that the cyclone was brewing in the Bay of Bengal.

“Way back on April 26, we told them a cyclone was coming,” Mr Yadav said, referring to general warnings of a growing storm.The IMD’s 41st and final advisory about the status of the storm was issued on Saturday, just after the cyclone hit land.

Mrs Bush yesterday accused Myanmar’s military regime of failing to take action to protect the remote part of the impoverished country from the storm. “Although they were aware of the threat, Burma’s state-run media failed to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm’s path,” she said.

The IMD, which also alerted the World Meteorological Organisation, declined to comment on Mrs Bush’s allegations.

The official death toll from the cyclone stands at 22,000 with a further 41,000 people listed as missing. Most of the victims were killed in the Irrawaddy river delta, a remote but densely populated region of malarial swampland that is hard to reach at the best of times, experts say.

International aid agencies, which are still waiting for permission to enter the country four days after the storm, said delivering aid to such a remote region was posing a major challenge.

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