“We will begin with two advance teams being ferried by the World Food Programme’s helicopter to two main townships of Labutta and Pyapon,” ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said.

The team would “cover the entire cyclone-affected areas” and compile a first-hand “progress report” for an ASEAN Roundtable meeting in Yangon on June 24.

That meeting would be followed by a meeting of the ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force a day later as the regional grouping steps up its efforts to coordinate the international aid response in cooperation with the Myanmar junta.

The deployment of the assessment team comes a day after the United States gave up trying to convince the junta to allow aid-laden warships stationed off the devastated southern delta to deliver their vital supplies.

Cyclone Nargis left more than 133,000 people dead or missing when it smashed into the country formally known as Burma, but the secretive military regime has severely limited access for foreign relief workers.

Buddhist monks and volunteers are the most visible leaders of the relief effort, ferrying sacks of rice, clothes and medicine into the delta.

Myanmar’s most famous comedian, Zaganar , who has been leading deliveries of aid to survivors of Cyclone Nargis, has been arrested at his Yangon home, a relative said Thursday.

The United Nations estimates that of the 2.4 million survivors in need of food and shelter, 1.1 million have received no foreign aid.

Surin said the assessment team would be made up of representatives from the 10 ASEAN member countries, including Myanmar, and the United Nations. He did not provide a breakdown of those numbers.

It would be backed by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

The ASEAN chief said the next two weeks would be “crucial for building international confidence in this joint mission,” although it would not provide a full report on its findings until mid-July.

International relief agencies have been desperately appealing to the junta to remove obstacles and allow them to do their job amid fears of many more deaths from disease and hunger in the months ahead.

ASEAN has also come under criticism for its slow response to the storm and its apparent unwillingness to pressure Myanmar’s generals over a humanitarian issue in the face of such a catastrophe.

Foreign relief groups have been given limited access in recent days but say it is nowhere near enough. Aid agencies also complain that staff are only being given permission to travel to the hard-to-reach delta for one week at a time.

The UN’s World Food Programme has said boats and helicopters are now needed to reach survivors in the remotest regions, but the one WFP helicopter in the country was only given permission to leave Yangon on Monday.

Nine more helicopters are sitting on the tarmac in Thai airports. They are due to fly into Myanmar later this week but it remains unclear if and when they will be allowed into the delta.