UN to coordinate Asia’s tsunami warning centres

PHUKET: The United Nations emerged on Saturday as a coordinator for a regional tsunami warning centre after officials from 43 nations including India, Indonesia and Thailand failed to agree who should run it. The compromise dealt a blow to Thailand, host of the two-day tsunami ministerial meeting on the resort island of Phuket which was itself hit by the Dec. 26 killer waves that devastated Indian Ocean coastal regions. It had wanted to run the centre itself. Bangkok’s proposal to set up a regional tsunami trust fund, to which it pledged an initial $10 million contribution, was not welcome at the conference, where cabinet ministers of only six countries took part. “It will be premature to ask them to make a financial commitment after they received the proposal yesterday,” Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai told reporters when asked how delegates had responded to the proposed fund. “All of these arrangements should be under the umbrella of the United Nations’ specialised agencies that should be able to provide expertise and technological input into the arrangement.” reuters

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