Military-ruled Myanmar will allow international aid in the wake of a tropical cyclone that left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and without clean water, a UN official said on Monday.

Cyclone Nargis left at least 351 dead after making landfall at the weekend, packing winds of 190 kilometres per hour, wrecking thousands of buildings and knocking out power lines, Myanmar's state media reported.

Richard Horsey, of the UN disaster response office, said the cyclone left hundreds of thousands of people without shelter and clean water.

"The government have given figures of almost 100 000 needing shelter on one small island alone," he told AFP.

Urgent assistance

"If we look at the emergency needs for shelter and drinking water, there are several hundred thousand people who will need urgent assistance," he said.

Horsey said that Myanmar's reclusive military rulers have indicated to international agencies that they are willing to allow some aid to victims of the cyclone.

"Now we are having more detailed discussions in Yangon about what kind of assistance," Horsey said.

The International Federation of the Red Cross said earlier it was already distributing aid inside the country, where the military normally imposes stiff limits on the activities of aid agencies.

UN agencies and other international aid groups met Monday in Bangkok to share information and begin coordinating a response.

But with phone and electrical lines down, Horsey said it would take days to establish a clear picture of the extent of the disaster.

Former Swedish government minister Jens Orback, who was in Myanmar when the cyclone hit, warned electricity could be difficult to restore because trees had ripped apart so many of the wires.

"The electricity is going to take a long time to repair because it is all above ground and has all fallen down," Orback told AFP after arriving in Bangkok from Yangon.

v "Even in our hotel we couldn't move because of glass falling. We could see trees which must have been standing 100 years falling down. Many Burmese spoke of something they had never experienced before," he said.

No help from authorities

"For the first ten to twelve hours there was no help from the authorities. There were no policemen and no military on the streets but people were privately out there with their handsaws chopping the trees," he said.

Orback was in Yangon with the Olaf Palme Centre, which encourages democratic development, to research political conditions ahead of a referendum Saturday on a new constitution.

The military, which has ruled this country formerly known as Burma since 1962, has vowed to press ahead with the balloting despite the cyclone.

The vote is the first since general elections in 1990, which were won by the pro-democracy opposition but ignored by the regime.

AFP