The United Nations is warning that the death toll from the deadly cyclone that hit Burma on May 3 may reach 60,000. News broadcaster CNN is quoting the top US diplomat there, Shari Villarosa, as saying that more than 100,000 may have died in the country's delta region alone. Aid is desperately needed on a war footing.

But the delivery of humanitarian aid does not justify going to war as demanded by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. To overcome Burmese official reluctance to accept international assistance, he is urging the UN Security Council to pass a resolution to force through the delivery of aid.

"Humanitarian warriors" have given "humanitarian intervention" such a bad name that the deeply divisive idea has had to be rescued and repackaged into the more unifying and politically marketable responsibility to protect concept R2P for short which was endorsed by world leaders at the UN summit in 2005.

Kouchner's motivation and impatience are understandable: he was one of the founders of Doctors without Borders, a great Nobel Peace Prize-winning humanitarian organisation. And his sympathy for the cyclone victims is commendable.

Still, I can think of no better way to damage R2P beyond repair in Asia and most of the rest of the developing world than have humanitarian assistance delivered into Burma backed by Western soldiers fighting in the jungles of South-East Asia again.

If France has soldiers ready to spare for serious combat, perhaps they could assist or relieve beleaguered Canadian soldiers in southern Afghanistan.

The former British diplomat John Holmes (ambassador to France, as it happens) has rightly rejected Kouchner's call as unnecessarily confrontational. He added that cooperation from Burmese authorities was "reasonable and heading in the right direction".

Burma's military junta has been an unmitigated disaster for the country.

My all too vivid impressions of Burma are of a gentle people suffering horribly under an unrelentingly oppressive regime that has stolen and squandered the nation's wealth and driven it to ruin and misery. Where in most cases a regime has some redeeming feature, I could neither see nor think of one insofar as this distasteful regime is concerned.

Hesitations about invoking R2P are not based therefore in any tender thoughts about the junta. R2P is one of the most important normative advances in global governance since World War II. We managed to find international consensus on it by creatively formulating it in non- confrontational language, restricting the circumstances in which outside military intervention is justified to large-scale killings (not death caused by natural disasters) and ethnic cleansing, and surrounding it with prevention before and reconstruction after military intervention.

Prospects of R2P providing the legal and normative foundation for when military intervention is needed to stop killings will diminish if it is abused and misused. As it is, we can detect signs of a roll-back as some countries that previously endorsed it in 2005 now develop symptoms of buyer's remorse. Cuba and Sri Lanka are among the more prominent, but the sentiment is widely enough shared that the General Assembly forced the secretary-general to drop R2P from the title of his special adviser on the subject.

The R2P cause is not helped by over-enthusiastic supporters misapplying it to non-R2P type situations, which Burma after the cyclone undoubtedly is. Instead of securing timely action, this will complicate humanitarian relief efforts in this particular case and more generally afterwards.

The solution lies in invigorated efforts at four levels, based on solidarity with the victims and not the rights and privileges of interveners. First, in direct exchanges with the Burmese authorities. At the end of the day, they are in effective control and any action requires both their consent and cooperation.

Fighting them will worsen an already terrible humanitarian tragedy.

Second, and at the opposite end of the scale, in encouraging but non threatening resolutions and statements at the UN from the secretary-general and presidents of the General Assembly and Security Council. There is no substitute for the UN's unique global legitimacy.

Third, by the major Asian powers: China, India and Japan. With major power status comes matching responsibility and they should step up to the plate.

And fourth, by the South-East Asian neighbours of Burma, including the Association of South- East Asian Nations as the regional organization. ASEAN has never fully recovered from the premature and ill-advised decision to admit Burma and its policy of constructive engagement and absolute non- interference in each other's internal affairs have been progressively discredited. It's time for them to show some backbone and regain slipping legitimacy, credibility and relevance.

If the Asians come on board, political progress will be swift in unblocking obstacles and the delivery of humanitarian aid will be effective. And using the prevention and reconstruction language of R2P will promote the political legitimacy of the military intervention component when and where it becomes necessary.

Without the Asians on board, forget it.

Ramesh Thakur is a member of the international advisory board of the Global Centre for R2P in New York and a patron of the Asia-Pacific Centre for R2P in Brisbane.

He is also the author of The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect.

BYLINE: The Canberra Times , Canberra Times