No one knows how many people have died in the three weeks of delay and obfuscation that have passed since Cyclone Nargis, but one thing is clear: most of those who survived the storm are still alive and desperately in need of help. There have been no epidemics or famine so far. The aid coming in is late, but there are still many lives to be saved.

The biggest problem will not be securing supplies of food, shelter and medicine, but in physically getting them to the cyclone victims. For these reasons boats like the flat-bottomed aluminium barges provided by Britain will be as valuable as bags of rice.

But knowing the record of the Burmese junta, can it really be so easy? For most of 20 years it has reviled the international community with a mixture of crude defiance and subtle game-playing.

General Than Shwe has promised to admit aid workers of all nationalities – but for how long? Three-day visas would fulfil the letter of his promise, but make it impossible for any meaningful work to be done. Similarly, the promised access to the disaster zone. Will the agencies be allowed to travel freely? Or will they be restricted to tours of the Potemkin refugee camps to which Ban Ki Moon was guided?

It is always difficult to interpret the actions of a closed regime, but certain consistent principles stand out in everything they do. One is greed. The junta has announced that $11 billion needed, but it is wholly unclear how it expects that money to be delivered. If the condition of admitting aid workers is that the cash is delivered straight into government coffers, the whole agreement will fall apart.

But more important even than money is control. The generals know that foreigners despise their shabby dictatorship and long for its collapse. They fear that the presence of large numbers of them in their country will only encourage Burmese with the same aspirations. And they are absolutely right.

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