HIGHLIGHTS: 1. An ASEAN-UN International Pledging Conference on Cyclone Nargis was held on Sunday 25 May in Yangon. Fifty-one countries were represented at the meeting, where there was universal recognition of the unprecedented magnitude of the disaster for Myanmar. There was unanimous agreement on the need to scale up urgently and very significantly the current relief efforts to ensure that those in desperate need are reached quickly and with adequate life-saving relief supplies, and that an effective flow of these supplies is maintained for as long as necessary. There was strong agreement that a major extra effort would be needed from all quarters to achieve the immediate objective of preventing further unnecessary deaths. There was strong support for the decision reached at the Special ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting held on 19 May 2008 in Singapore to establish an ASEAN-led coordinating mechanism. To realize this, an ASEAN Humanitarian Task Force for the Victims of Cyclone Nargis has been established, composed of senior officials and experts from ASEAN countries, and led by the Secretary General of ASEAN. There was a warm welcome for the proposed creation of a Yangon-based Tripartite Core Group comprising representatives from the Government of Myanmar, ASEAN and UN as a working mechanism for coordinating, facilitating, and monitoring the flow of international assistance into the country. This should begin its work immediately to ensure full information exchange, close coordination of relief and recovery efforts, and resolution of any problems that may arise. For the longer term, the Government of Myanmar focused on the scale of rehabilitation, reconstruction and recovery efforts likely to be needed, and the immediate requirement to ensure that farming and fishing activities could be resumed as soon as possible. The international community was ready to consider helping the Government of Myanmar in these and other areas. For these purposes, a comprehensive rapid joint assessment of recovery needs, and development of a shared post-disaster recovery and reconstruction plan are indispensable steps.... 2. The Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mr John Holmes, reminded the conference that the crisis was still clearly in the emergency relief phase and that an effective relief supply operation will be needed for many months to come. Flights are currently arriving at the rate of around 10-15 per day, and these still need to be stepped up further to meet the need. The crucial question remains how many people of those in urgent need of major assistance have not been reached at all. It is clear that delivery needs to be scaled up at the far end of the chain as fast as possible in these areas to avert the risk of extra and unnecessary deaths due to diseases and nutritional deficiency. The critical danger remains of a potential second wave of deaths among those not so far reached or only reached with small amounts of assistance. Forced returns of any kind are completely unacceptable. He concluded by reiterating that the only test at the end of the day is whether lives have been saved, more unnecessary deaths have been avoided, and those still in desperate need have been helped.... 3. Two interagency teams comprising UN, INGO and national NGOs returned from an assessment mission to Bogale and Labutta Districts, visiting a number of townships to assess the current status of coordination. The two groups presented their findings in Yangon today, including recommendations. These findings will feed into current planning to operationalize five coordination centres in Labutta, Bogale, Pyapon, Mawlamyinegyun, and Pathein. In the same vein, the Humanitarian Coordinator requested Cluster Leads to identify counterparts in these five locations, stressing that these counterparts need not be from the lead agency. The Humanitarian Coordinator advised leads to identify in particular national and international NGO counterparts with appropriate operational capacity in these locations.... 4. Identifying the need to further strengthen the participation and information sharing with NGOs in the clusters, the Humanitarian Coordinator and Cluster Leads agreed to identify NGO focal points for each cluster.... 5. The Humanitarian Coordinator advised Cluster Leads today that dedicated coordination and information management capacity for each cluster was a priority. The Humanitarian Coordinator agreed to request support from Global Cluster Leads where required.... 6. There has been no update to the official figures for dead and missing since 16 May. 77,738 are reported dead and 55,917 missing.