"We must believe that enhanced warnings would not have made a big difference" given the storm's conditions and the low level of Myanmar's preparedness, WMO disaster risk reduction director Dieter Schiessl told journalists.

Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar on May 2-3, killing at least 133,000 people and leaving more than a million homeless and in urgent need of assistance.

Schiessl said several weather conditions combined to exacerbate the cyclone's devastating effect.

"The nature of the storm could not have been worse than it was," he told journalists.

"The track of the storm, the strength of the storm and the fact that the storm remained stationary for nearly 12 hours over the Irrawaddy river delta next to Yangon of course gave the storm the opportunity to develop its maximum damage impact," he said.

"If the storm had moved faster, or at a slightly northerly or a much more southerly track, the damage would have been significantly reduced," he added.

This was compounded by the vulnerability of the low-lying delta region and the fact that the population was ill-prepared, with many people taking the "disastrous" decision to seek shelter by staying in their own homes.

"Among the population itself there's little understanding of how to behave in a situation of an oncoming tropical cyclone... most of the people decided to take shelter by staying home," he said.

This proved to be "a very disastrous decision, although I underline they had really nothing else they could do," Schiessl said.

Myanmar's military junta came under fierce criticism from US First Lady Laura Bush for allegedly not passing on warnings to the population.

"Although they were aware of the threat, Burma's state-run media failed to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm's path," Bush said at the White House on May 5.

However, the WMO said the country's meteorological service had issued "sufficient, correct and timely" warnings ahead of the cyclone's landfall.

Myanmar's meteorological services issued 33 warnings to 14 governmental authorities, the media and general public from April 25 until May 3, the day after landfall, Schiessl said.

"The general public had been warned through hourly broadcasts on television and radio, through mobile phones, through Internet websites and of course through the printed press," he added.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was set to meet the country's secretive military rulers later Wednesday in the hope of convincing them to accept a full-scale cyclone relief operation.

There has been an international uproar over the limits on the aid operation imposed by Myanmar since the storm, which has left at least 133,000 people dead or missing in the country's worst natural disaster ever.

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