Asean Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan said in Washington on Wednesday that the Burmese government had agreed to grant visas to an “emergency rapid assessment team,” which would leave for Rangoon within 24 hours.

The Burmese military government said on Wednesday it would also accept 160 relief workers from India, China, Bangladesh and Thailand.

Thailand is to send 20 medical teams to Burma on Saturday, supported by a medical unit under royal patronage. The unit will comprise 30 physicians from Thailand’s public health ministry, the Thai Red Cross and two government hospitals.

The Thai assistance was discussed in talks in Rangoon between Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej and his Burmese counterpart Thein Sein. Samak went to the former Burmese capital on a mission to persuade the junta to accept foreign relief workers, but he said Thein Sein had assured him that the Burmese authorities could cope alone.

“I was told that 27 countries offered to sent relief workers Burma but the country only wanted relief supplies, not a large number of foreign experts, as it can manage to solve its own problem,” Samak was quoted as saying by the Thai News Agency on Thursday.

Samak said Thein Sein assured him during a visit to a government relief centre that there had been no outbreaks of disease or cases of starvation or famine among the cyclone survivors, who had been transported to safe areas.