UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will travel to Myanmar this week to apply pressure on the country's military rulers to open more channels for help. His spokeswoman, Michele Montas, said she also expected an international conference in Bangkok on May 24 to marshal funds for the relief effort.

Monday's meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers in Singapore came after upbeat comments from Britain's Asia minister, Mark Malloch-Brown, about the prospects for getting more aid into Myanmar.

Malloch-Brown said that a turning point was near for opening the spigots wider for help to up to 2.5 million desperate survivors of the cyclone that left at least 134,000 people dead or missing.

The World Food Programme (WFP) says it has managed to get rice and beans to 212,000 of the 750,000 people it thinks are most in need.

Asian nations considered friendly by Myanmar were sending in aid teams and an ASEAN assessment team was on the ground, he said. That team is due to report to the meeting in Singapore.

Other countries would make their contributions through this channel, Malloch-Brown said.