Ban’s announcement came after a crucial two-hour meeting with junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the country’s most powerful figure.

“This agreement can produce results. And the implementation will be the key,” Ban said at a news conference after returning to Yangon, the country’s biggest city, from their meeting in Naypyitaw, the capital.

There was no immediate public announcement from Myanmar’s military government confirming the agreement and no indication how quickly it would be implemented.

“I believe they will keep and honor their commitment,” Ban said.

A senior U.N. official present at the meeting said Than Shwe also gave the green light for foreigners to work in the hardest-hit region, the Irrawaddy Delta, which has been virtually off-limits to them.

Ban did not say specifically that foreign aid workers would be allowed into the delta, but said he was told they would be given “unhindered access to affected areas” and would be allowed in regardless of nationality.

“He (Than Shwe) has taken a flexible position on that issue,” Ban said.

At least 78,000 people were killed when Cyclone Nargis struck May 2-3 and 56,000 are missing. The U.N. says up to 2.5 million survivors face hunger, homelessness and potential outbreaks of deadly diseases. It estimates that aid has reached only about 25 percent of them.

Ban said Than Shwe agreed that “international aid could be delivered to Myanmar via civilian ships and small boats.”

The wording of Ban’s announcement suggested that U.S., British and French warships waiting off Myanmar’s coast with relief supplies would not be allowed to dock. But it also left open the possibility that other boats could ferry supplies from those ships.

Myanmar’s military government has until now refused to allow an unimpeded influx of foreign aid and experts to reach survivors. While granting an increasing number of visas to foreign staffers, the regime barred all but a handful of them from the delta.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warned Friday that hundreds of thousands of people in remote areas of the delta have insufficient food, and said prices for rice, cooking oil and other basics had doubled throughout the country.

Only a “very narrow window of opportunity” remains to provide seeds and other material to farmers before the rice planting season upon which millions depend begins in a few weeks, the agency said. It said that half the cattle and buffaloes in 10 townships surveyed had perished during the storms.

“I had a very good meeting with Senior Gen. Than Shwe and particularly on the aid workers. He has agreed to allow all the aid workers (into Myanmar), regardless of nationality,” Ban said in remarks right after the meeting.

“I urged him that it would be crucially important for him to allow aid workers as swiftly as possible and all these aid relief items also be delivered to the needy people as soon as possible,” said the U.N. chief.

Than Shwe, he said, had also agreed to make Yangon the logistics hub of the aid operation, which Ban called “an important development.”

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