Bangkok, October 29 2008: Six months after Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar, key partners in the country's recovery process gathered in Bangkok to assess how to best strengthen their joint efforts to support inclusive and sustainable recovery there.

The two-day Regional High-level Expert Group Meeting on Post-Nargis recovery and Livelihood Opportunities in Myanmar was organized by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), with the support of the Government of the Union of Myanmar.

It brought together high-ranking Myanmar Government officials and representatives of ASEAN, ESCAP and other UN and international partners, as well as experts with experience in dealing with such recent disasters in the region as the 2004 Asian Tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, and the 2007 Cyclone Sidr in Bangladesh.

The high-level commitment to this dialogue was reflected in the opening statements by ESCAP's Executive Secretary, Under-Secretary-General Noeleen Heyzer, ASEAN's Secretary-General, Dr Pitsuwan, and the Myanmar Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, U Kyaw Thu.

"I believe this is an opportunity for those who are involved in the post-Nargis recovery efforts to learn from the experience, although painfully gained, of those who have been on a similar path in order to put together a comprehensive and effective early-, medium- and long-term strategy," said Myanmar's Deputy Minister U Kyaw Thu, who is also the Chairman of the Tripartite Core Group (TCG), formed by the UN, ASEAN and the Myanmar Government for the purpose of coordinating relief efforts in the wake of the cyclone.

"I hope that with ESCAP, and with experts here from Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh and other various international agencies, UN and non-UN, we can together enhance the capacity of the region, to add on to the lessons that we have learnt and translate the lessons into practical procedures," said Dr. Pitsuwan, in his keynote address, adding, "if we are not prepared, we will be in deeper trouble the next time around".

Under-Secretary-General Heyzer, in noting the toll that Cyclone Nargis hadtaken on Myanmar, indicated that the expert group meeting represented a turning point in the partnership of the UN and ASEAN with the Myanmar Government.

"This experts' group meeting should be seen as a stepping stone to move beyond discussing Nargis-related recovery strategies to a wider discussion on the future development direction for Myanmar as a whole," she said.

Ms. Heyzer highlighted that the meeting was timely, and hoped that its outcomes would feed into the Post-Nargis Recovery and Preparedness Plan (PONREPP), the ongoing TCG Periodic Review, and the ASEAN-UN Summit to be held in Thailand in mid-December.

ESCAP, as the UN system's regional liaison for the meeting, is working with the Government of Thailand � the current chair of ASEAN � to finalize the Summit agenda in the coming weeks.

The expert group meeting followed visits in May and June by Ms.Heyzer toMyanmar, during which Government representatives and the UN Country Team welcomed the idea of ESCAP, as part of the advisory group to the ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force and the regional development arm of the United.

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