BANGKOK, Thailand — The head of the U.S. Pacific Command flew into Myanmar yesterday aboard the first U.S. military aid flight to press for a full-scale international relief operation for the nearly 2 million victims of Cyclone Nargis.

Myanmar officials, facing mounting international pressure to open their country's borders, promised to consider the request.

President Bush said yesterday that an angry world should condemn the way Myanmar's military rulers are handling the aftermath of the devastating cyclone.

"Here they are with a major catastrophe on their hands, and (they) do not allow there to be the full kind of might of a compassionate world to help them," Bush said in Washington.

Asked in a CBS News radio interview if the isolated generals running the country were more concerned about their own grip on power than with helping their own people, Bush answered, "That's the only conclusion you can draw."

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed "immense frustration" with the pace of the relief effort, slowed by Myanmar's secretive military government. After trying for days to get top general Than Shwe on the telephone, Ban said, he sent a letter urging him to facilitate a massive aid operation.

Adm. Timothy Keating flew in a U.S. Air Force C-130 from an air base in Thailand that is turning into a staging area for relief for Myanmar, also known as Burma.

Accompanying him was Henrietta Fore, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development. At the airport in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, they conferred with Myanmar's top naval officer in the highest-level military contact between the two countries in decades.

Keating and Fore did not go beyond the airport before flying back to Thailand. Fore said she believed that "our discussions were a good first step" toward broader U.S. help.

The official death toll from the cyclone rose by nearly 3,500 yesterday to 31,938, with another 30,000 missing. The United Nations and others have said the death toll could reach 100,000 or higher.

The United States has offered to deploy as many as 4,000 Marines, six C-130 cargo planes and a large number of heavy-lift helicopters in what would be its largest disaster relief effort since the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. It also said it could have three naval ships, with helicopters on board, positioned off Myanmar's southwest coast within 48 hours.

"We have a broad array of personnel and equipment, and we are ready to respond as soon as the Burmese give us permission," Keating said.

The cargo plane on which Keating and Fore traveled delivered bottled water, blankets and mosquito nets. U.S. and Myanmar military personnel jointly unloaded the supplies, which Myanmar officials promised to send quickly to the disaster zone by helicopter.

Myanmar authorities cleared two more U.S. C-130 relief flights for today. In another sign of gradual cooperation, U.N. officials said that Myanmar had now approved visas for 34 aid workers.

The U.S. government, meanwhile, moved yesterday to allow individuals to send unlimited amounts of money to people in Myanmar.

The Washington Post and Associated Press contributed to this report.