Bangkok - EU aid Commissioner Louis Michel was returning from Myanmar Friday after a two-day visit to cyclone-ravaged Myanmar, without making any concrete progress on securing access for international aid workers or more humanitarian aid.

Although Michel had handed the military junta five urgent requests for action, he had only received assurances that they would be looked at, he said, during a stopover at Bangkok airport.

It "was a strictly humanitarian mission. There was no political dimension to this mission," he stressed.

"No country can handle this type of problem alone ... They believe they are able to manage," he said.

The commissioner had requested the extention of visas for EU aid workers in the country, more visas for UN experts, the opening of the Pathein military airport in the Irrawaddy Delta for the delivery of relief supplies.

"We can't afford to wait too long," he said. "Time is life."

The official death toll from Cyclone Nargis has now risen to more than 78,000 with 56,000 missing, the BBC reported Friday, although the International Red Cross and the United Nations says that it is above 100,000. (dpa)