Pressure Grows for Wave Warnings

Rich states yesterday came under renewed pressure to provide countries around the Indian Ocean with the early-warning system they lacked when huge waves killed more than 160,000 people on Boxing Day.

Experts believe a warning system of the type used by Japan and the US in the Pacific Ocean for several decades would have saved countless lives had it been in place.

Aid groups called on participants to put impoverished countries at the centre of the five-day UN world conference on disaster reduction in the Japanese city of Kobe.

"Poor men, women and children do not have the power to influence decisions that would make them less vulnerable or strengthen their resilience," said Roger Yates of ActionAid International.

"Those failures of governance that every day exclude poor people from national and international priorities also exclude them from measures which could protect them when disaster strikes."

Japan, no stranger to the destruction caused by earthquakes and tsunamis, is expected to be instrumental in providing the know-how for a warning system.

Yesterday the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, said Japan, which has pledged $500m (£270m) to the relief effort, would run training courses on early-warning technology.

Delegates in Kobe will spend the next few days discussing a range of options, including a Unesco proposal to set up a warning system costing $30m that would be in place by the middle of next year.

But UN officials have made it clear that long-term recovery will require extra measures, such as better breakwaters and sea walls, hazard maps showing vulnerable areas, and evacuation routes and shelters.

"What we need to have here is a strong commitment by countries and agencies," said Jan Egeland, the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs.

Mr Egeland, who criticised the US's initial response to the tsunami disaster as stingy, said he hoped all disaster-prone regions would be equipped with early-warning systems in the next 10 years.

Japan also said it would direct overseas aid towards reducing the impact of natural disasters. "If disaster reduction continues to be kept separate from development and reconstruction planning, it will be impossible to break the vicious cycle of disaster and poverty," a government statement said.