UNITED NATIONS -- The French envoy to the United Nations warned Friday that Myanmar risked committing "crimes against humanity" in its failure to allow foreign aid in to help victims of the devastating cyclone.

Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said he appealed during a UN General Assembly session for the United Nations "to finally react strongly, very strongly" to the Myanmar military regime's defiance, two weeks after Cyclone Nargis.

He told reporters here in French that he had warned the closed door session that "we were moving slowly from a situation of not helping people in danger to a real risk of crimes against humanity, and we cannot accept that."

"I said that what is going on is unacceptable, that the aid was not getting there, and that people were dying today not just because of the cyclone anymore, but also because Myanmar authorities refuse to authorize international aid," Ripert said.

"Tens of thousands of lives have been lost, hundreds of thousands could be lost."

Myanmar's regime said the cyclone has left nearly 78,000 people dead and another 56,000 missing.

The junta has insisted it can manage the catastrophe alone, despite urgent international pleas to open up their doors and avert a second wave of death among desperate victims short of food, water, shelter and medical care.

While Myanmar's generals have accepted hundreds of tons of relief supplies -- from high-tech foodstuffs used in famine regions to basic needs like fresh water -- they have rebuffed the help of foreign disaster management experts and teams experienced in distributing aid and helping disaster victims.