Asian nations gather in China for tsunami warning system
Asian nations gather in China for tsunami warning system
Agence France-Presse, Beijing
Asian nations began two days of talks on Tuesday in Beijing on setting up an early warning system for tsunamis to prevent a repeat of last month's disaster, believed to have claimed more than 280,000 lives.
Representatives from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, Japan and other countries focused on ways to coordinate efforts among governments in the region to be better braced in the future.
"This is an imperative given the scientific fact that our part of the world is so vulnerable to earthquake-generated tsunami waves," said Foster Gultom, a ranking member of the Indonesian delegation.
The number of people presumed dead in last month's Asian tsunamis rose to more than 280,000 on Tuesday, with Indonesian authorities announcing a further increase in the number of dead and missing.
As the delegates observed one minute of silence to remember the victims, some of them pondered how many lives might have been saved if an early warning system had already been in place.
"Last month, if we had been better prepared, the loss would have been much smaller," Sitaheng Rasphone, Lao vice minister of agriculture, told AFP.
Waves from earthquake-generated tsunamis can travel at speeds exceeding those of a jet airplane, making an early warning system all the more important, delegates said.
"Tsunamis move at speeds of to 640 to 960 kilometers an hour," said U Pe Than, Myanmar vice minister of transport. "It's essential to have an early warning system."
The Beijing meeting follows a series of recent gatherings triggered by the tsunami, including a major meeting in Japan last week, but delegates said they still considered the latest session would prove useful.
"China has long experience on how to detect earthquakes, and also China is one of ASEAN's dialogue partners," said Rasphone of Laos. "China is playing its dialog partner role."
Talks started on an optimistic note, based on the speedy response to December's tsunami.
"The sheer scale, speed and global reach of this catastrophe was unprecedented and still difficult to comprehend," said Terje Skavdal, a UN advisor. "The response we have seen is also unprecedented, as it had to be."
Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu called it the fourth great example of regional cooperation after the late-1990s Asian financial crisis, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis and the outbreak of bird flu.