UNITED NATIONS — Burma watchers are losing patience with the ruling junta’s delays in delivering aid to cyclone victims and with the United Nations’s policy of separating humanitarian assistance from political issues such as the need to free the country’s best-known dissident.

Under Burmese law, Aung San Suu Kyi should be released from house arrest on Saturday, her American lawyer said, the day the junta will conduct a second round of voting on its proposed constitution. Although a spokeswoman said Secretary-General Ban is aware that Ms. Suu Kyi must be released, it is unclear whether he will bring the issue up in his scheduled meeting Friday with Burma’s strongman, General Than Shwe.

“Obviously, the rule of law is not their forte,” said Jared Genser, a lawyer with the Washington-based firm DLA Piper US LLP, retained to represent Ms. Suu Kyi. Still, he added, it will be hard for the generals to ignore their own law, which limits the number of one-year extensions to house arrests. Under that law, he said, Ms. Suu Kyi, whose detention was last extended May 24, 2007, should be freed for good by midnight Saturday.

General Shwe has evaded Mr. Ban’s attempts to contact him since Cyclone Nargis hit Burma on May 2, but when the secretary-general arrived in the country yesterday, he was promised a meeting with the general. According to his spokesmen, Mr. Ban’s trip is designed to deal strictly with humanitarian assistance.

“The ones politicizing this are not us,” but the junta, France’s U.N ambassador, Jean-Maurice Ripert, said. The Burmese authorities have tied the international donor conference Sunday in Rangoon to issues like the referendum, he said. They also have demanded that U.N.-coordinated assistance to the country be diverted to reconstruction, instead of saving lives.

The cyclone has killed nearly 200,000 people, according to independent assessments. At least 2 million, many of them orphaned children, are stranded with no access to aid. American and French ships — loaded with food, drinking water, plastic sheeting, and other necessities — are waiting off Burma, but the government has not authorized deliveries by small boat or helicopter.

The leadership of the United Nations has said aid delivery has improved somewhat, and it has expressed hope that Mr. Ban’s visit will further improve the situation. But others say the majority of victims still have no access to aid. “If nothing moves in the next few days, we’ll go back to the Security Council,” Mr. Ripert said, adding that the council may pass a resolution forcing the junta to allow aid deliveries.