Away from public view, Myanmar has opened up to global relief efforts to an unprecedented degree after initially thwarting foreign attempts to help victims of a devastating cyclone last spring, a U.S. relief agency said in a report issued Friday.

The May 2-3 rampage of Cyclone Nargis left 140,000 people dead or missing.

A report released by Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy group, said the image of "a recalcitrant government that rejects aid from the generous nations of the world" is no longer accurate.

The group said Myanmar has issued some 1,000 visas to international aid workers since June and offered "an unprecedented level of access" to the Irrawaddy River Delta region.

The report said Myanmar, which is widely known as Burma, is now more open to international relief than at any time in the past two decades, and that the unfolding situation is "a story ignored by international reports that focus on the government's obstructionism."

Several Burma watchers based in neighboring Thailand, along with a U.N. official who keeps tabs on Myanmar, said foreign relief workers are now able to enter the country and travel quite freely around the southern delta region.

Win Min, a lecturer on contemporary Myanmar at Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand, said the military regime has artfully cast the opening as a response to appeals from a regional political bloc, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, rather than as a response to pressure from the United Nations, the United States or European countries.

"ASEAN is not a threat to them. ASEAN does not put a lot of pressure on them," Win Min said, adding that he believes the opening to foreign relief workers will remain in effect as long as foreign aid flows in.