The United Nations today suspended relief flights to Burma amid a tense standoff with the military regime which is refusing to allow foreign aid workers into the country to help with the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis.

The suspension, which followed the impounding of UN World Food Programme aid shipments, came as the organisation expressed “exasperation” at the intransigence of the isolationist junta in the face of a vast humanitarian crisis.

Despite the increasing momentum of the disaster, the junta said today that the best way the world could help its nation was to just send in material rather than personnel.

The regime then urged its citizens to vote for an army-drafted constitution in Saturday's referendum that made no mention of the estimated 1.5 million people clinging to survival a week after the cyclone.

“Myanmar is not in a position to receive rescue and information teams from foreign countries at the moment,” a government-run newspaper said.

It added: “But at present Myanmar is giving priority to receiving relief aid and distributing them to the storm-hit regions with its own resources.”

The UN expressed astonishment at the junta’s resistance to foreign help, which it said was “unprecedented” in the history of humanitarian relief.

Paul Risley, a spokesman of the World Food Program in Bangkok, said today that aid shipments that arrived in Burma on two flights from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, had been impounded. The shipments included 38 tonnes of high-energy biscuits.

“All of the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated. It is being held by the government. We are waiting resolution of this matter,” he said.

“For the time being, we have no choice but to end further efforts to bring critical needed food aid into Myanmar at this time,” Mr Risley added.

The devastating cyclone had unleashed a crisis that would cripple any country in the world, he said, even those with a relief capacity far greater than that of Burma. It was “absolutely essential” to get rescue workers on the ground, he continued.

Meanwhile staff at the organisation’s Bangkok office spoke of their frustration at the regime’s refusal to grant visas to aid workers.

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