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"The trucks, with 20 tons of rice and four tons of high-energy biscuits and plastic tarps, have arrived in Labutta," said World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman Marcus Prior.

It was the first successful delivery of assistance to Labutta, one of the hardest-hit coastal towns, since Cyclone Nargis hit six days ago.

The WFP expects to have brought in 45 tons of high-energy biscuits, the basic survival food in disaster situations, by Friday evening, enough to meet the minimum nutritional needs of 100,000 people, said Prior.

While the WFP has already distributed 156 tons of emergency food from their warehouses in Burma to people in Rangoon, the former capital, it has faced obstacles getting the food out to the countryside.

Labutta, the first place in the Irrawaddy Delta to receive WFP aid, has become a magnet for people left homeless and without food by the disaster, Joakim Cottig, a spokesman for the Adventist and Development Relief Agency (ADRA).

"Labutta, which normally has a population of 50,000, now has more than 120,000 refugees from the surrounding areas," said Cottig.

Thousands of people are on foot, looking for food and drinking water, which has become scarce in the region.

"The harvest has been to a large extent destroyed," Cottig told Deutsche Presse-Agentur in Rangoon.

Most of the cyclone's casualties were in the Irrawaddy Delta, the country's low-lying coastal plains where an estimated 60 per cent of the nation's rice is grown.

Once a region of abundance, the region is now a disaster zone.

"Bodies are lying everywhere," said Cottig. "The danger of epidemics is now very large."

The threat of escalating deaths in the region from disease, hunger and exposure is increasing daily as the international relief programme continues to be bogged down by Burma's military masters.

According to the government's latest figures, the cyclone claimed 22,997 lives, left 42,119 missing and 1,403 injured.

Other sources estimate the death toll is closer to 100,000.

Six days after the storm, residents of the Irrawaddy Delta remain largely cut off from assistance, primarily because of restrictions placed on international aid workers by Burmese military regime.

The regime, which plans to hold a referendum Saturday designed to seal its political dominance by getting the public's endorsement of a pro-military constitution, has proven the biggest impediment to the disaster-relief effort underway.

Visas needed to get UN experts in to the country to set up the logistics for the relief programme were still facing delays in Bangkok, said Richard Horsey, spokesman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the UN agency that is heading the Burmese aid effort.

OCHA is expected to issue an international "Relief Appeal," some time Friday, after trying to assess the extent of the calamity.

Aid workers have expressed frustration at the reluctance with which the Burmese government is handling the global outpouring of aid to its stricken people.

Some governments, such as the US, are reportedly mulling the option of air-dropping relief supplies on the affected populations without the government's approval.

Dissident groups in Burma appealed for help from abroad that circumvents the junta.

"To save thousands of lives before it's too late, we would like to urge the United Nations and foreign governments to intervene in Burma immediately to provide humanitarian and relief assistance directly to the people of Burma without waiting for the permission of the military junta," said a joint statement issued by the All Burma Monks' Alliance, the 88 Generation Students and All Burma Federation of Student Unions, three leading anti-government groups.