The United Nations children?s agency (UNICEF) is trying to convince army-ruled Myanmar not to place at least 2,000 youngsters orphaned by cyclone Nargis into state-run homes, a senior official said yesterday. ?We should try and place children within family environments as a priority, and not in institutions,? Anne-Claire Dufay, UNICEF?s child protection chief in the former Burma, told Reuters in an interview yesterday. ?We should try to keep them in their community and even in the interim, before we are able to trace families, we should be able to place children in temporary foster care families. That?s the message we are sending,? she said.

The junta said last week it would build orphanages in Labutta and Pyapon, two of the hardest-hit areas of the Irrawaddy delta, where the May 2 cyclone left 134,000 people dead or missing and another 2.4 million destitute.