Home »General News » Pakistan » India to host South Asia disaster management centre

  • News Desk
  • Nov 11th, 2005
  • Comments Off on India to host South Asia disaster management centre
South Asian nations agreed on Thursday to set up a disaster management centre in India to help the region better handle calamities like tsunamis, earthquakes and floods that have ravaged it in the past year.

The agreement came at a meeting of South Asian officials in the Bangladeshi capital, ahead of a November 12-13 summit of regional leaders which aims to push a long-standing goal of economic integration to achieve higher growth.

The region has been victim of two of the world's worst disasters in the past year - the Indian Ocean tsunami and the Kashmir earthquake - and authorities have been found ill-equipped to tackle the aftermath.

"Co-operation in disaster preparedness and disaster management is ... a priority area for Saarc," India's junior Foreign Minister, Edappakath Ahmed, said referring to the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation.

"India's offer to host a Saarc regional centre for disaster management has been welcomed ... and accepted in principle," he told a news conference.

"This is a recognition of India's abundant experience and capabilities in this regard, which we are prepared to put at the disposal of Saarc member states."

Saarc, a 20-year-old economic grouping, includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives.

While the tsunami killed 40,000 people in Sri Lanka and 16,000 in India, last month's Kashmir earthquake killed over 73,000 on the Pakistani side of the disputed region and another 1,300 on the Indian side. New Delhi is working on a plan to set up an early warning system for ocean disasters like tsunamis and a monitoring system costing $28 million is being built in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.

Copyright Reuters, 2005


the author

Top
Close
Close