The Hindu : International : Consensus on tsunami alert system for Indian Ocean

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 30, 2005

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International

Consensus on tsunami alert system for Indian Ocean

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE, JAN. 29. "Cooperative consensus" was reached at a multilateral conference in Thailand today to set up a "multi-nodal" system for early warnings against tsunamis in the Indian Ocean region and Southeast Asia.

With the participating countries and international agencies, numbering about 40, agreeing upon the need for such an alert-system, the substantive accord was that the various national early-warning facilities, now under way at various stages of conception and construction, could be suitably linked as a wider regional network for the Indian Ocean littoral states and the countries of Southeast Asia.

The one-day ministerial conference, held at Phuket where last month's tsunami had wreaked havoc, was inaugurated by the Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, who had taken the initiative for this conference in the specific context of the recent disaster.

India was represented at this meeting by K. Radhakrishnan, Director, Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, and T. P. Seetharam, India's Charge d' Affaires in Bangkok.

India, Indonesia and Thailand are among the countries that have already begun work to establish national-level alert systems. At today's meeting, too, Japan and the U.S. offered technical help to the Indian Ocean littoral states and the Southeast Asian countries. The decision at the Phuket meeting would be implemented in conformity with the accord reached at Kobe in Japan to go in for a regional system of alert against tsunamis, the sources said.

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