Bangkok - Myanmar's Department of Meteorology claimed Thursday to have issued warnings on the approach of Cyclone Nargis six days before the storm struck the country, killing tens of thousands of people, the World Meteorological Organization said.

"The Department of Meteorology and Hydrology (DMH) of Myanmar started to issue forecasts on cyclone Nargis as of April 27," said a statement issued in Geneva by the WMO.

Tun Lwin, permanent-secretary of the Myanmar Meteorological Department, told the WMO it had issued forecasts of the cyclone as early as April 27 and had warned "authorities" as of April 29th.

"A press briefing was given to national media on 1 May and newspaper headlines on 2 May, the day of the landfall, focused on the cyclone," said the WMO.

Yangon residents confirmed that cyclone warnings had appeared in local newspapers three days before the event, but it is questionable whether many of the victims in rural Myanmar had access to the news.

Myanmar's ruling junta has been heavily criticized, notably by US first lady Laura Bush among others, for failing to issue proper warnings to its people about the impending threat of the cyclone, which was packing 200-kilometres-per-hour winds when it first hit Myanmar's central coastline on May 2.

The WMO noted that Myanmar's meteorological department, which had recently benefited from and upgrading of its Global Telecommunications System, had received accurate information on the cyclone from the WMO regional centre in New Delhi.

The cyclone has devastated the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta region, the country's densely-populated rice bowl. The government has placed the death toll at close to 23,000 with another 42,000 missing.

"Nargis was the first tropical cyclone making landfall in Myanmar for 40 years," noted the WMO. "Such a rare hazard shows the need for a multi-hazard approach to early warnings systems." (dpa)