Isle official in on
tsunami warning plans

BANGKOK » Pacific Tsunami Warning Center Director Charles McCreery is among the representatives from 43 countries and 13 international organizations invited to gather in devastated southern Thailand this month to plan a tsunami warning system, a Thai foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday.

The Jan. 28-29 meeting will study an existing early-warning system for the Pacific Ocean and hear proposals on adapting it for the Indian Ocean, said Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman Sihasak Phuangketkeow.

Foreign ministers will be the main representatives of the attending countries, he said.

McCreery is in Kobe, Japan, attending an international conference of experts discussing ways of reducing the damage caused by natural disasters such as last month's Indian Ocean tsunami.

Phuket, where the meeting will be held, is a southern Thai resort island that suffered major damage and casualties from the Dec. 26 disaster.

More than 5,300 people in southern Thailand are confirmed dead from the tsunami, and an additional 3,100 remain unaccounted for.

Sihasak said the meeting would explore the long-established Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center -- the sole network in the world set up to warn against such disasters.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra already suggested Thailand as a center for such a system at the emergency summit on tsunamis held earlier this month in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.

This week, the Thai navy began building the country's first tsunami detection post on an island in the Andaman Sea, with measuring equipment and communication links to the Hawaii center in Ewa Beach.

The international organizations invited to the meeting include U.N. agencies and groups such as the Asian Development Bank. European countries with an interest or technical expertise are also invited, as are Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada.