As the Asian tsunami focuses world attention on natural disasters, experts on Wednesday called for a global early warning system for all such catastrophes as soon as possible.

The aim, they said, was to halve the number of deaths from natural calamities.

While too late for the more than 175,000 people who died in the massive Dec. 26 tsunami, such a system for the Indian Ocean is top of the agenda at a United Nations-sponsored conference this week in the Japanese city of Kobe, itself hit by a devastating earthquake a decade ago.

Although the focus is on tsunamis, officials said early warnings were needed no less urgently for other natural disasters such as typhoons, hurricanes and drought.

“The goal quite simply is that all communities everywhere should have access to an early warning programme as soon as possible,” said Jan Egeland, the U.N.‘s emergency relief coordinator. “Not only for tsunamis, which occur very infrequently.”

Natural disasters such as floods, storms, earthquakes and tsunamis have killed some 600,000 people over the last decade.

“Natural hazards will always occur, but they don’t need to turn into disasters if the proper measures are taken. There is a heavy cost in doing nothing,” Michel Jarraud, head of the U.N. World Meteorological Organisation, told Reuters.

“We believe that we can significantly reduce the number of people who die through proper prevention measures,” he added. “Our objective is to halve this number during the next decade.”

In a first technical session on a tsunami warning system, Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of UNESCO, said he hoped an Indian Ocean system could be operational by the middle of 2006 and a global system a year after that.

SPEED IS NEEDED

But officials warned that action must be taken now if the planned time frame is to be met.

“In a few months the interest in tsunami warning may fade,” said Peter Pissierssens, head of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO. “We’re really trying to get the train out of the station now while the interest is high.”

Japan is the site of some 20 percent of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or over - including the Kobe earthquake that killed 6,433 people a decade ago - and which have also left a history of devastating tsunamis.

It has put its experience to good use in setting up a tsunami warning system that aims to issue a warning within three minutes, a system put to use on Wednesday when a warning was issued for a group of islands south of Tokyo after a 6.8 magnitude earthquake off the eastern coast.

A tsunami of 30 cm (12 in) was detected at one location, but there were no reports of damage and the warning was called off after two hours.

Japan is also part of the Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Network, an international system set up after a devastating 1960 earthquake in Chile triggered tidal waves that killed more than 100 in Japan. This network is set to be a model for the system in the Indian Ocean.

No matter how good the technology, however, nothing can be done without communications systems to get the information out and without teaching residents what to do when a warning is issued.

People must also be taught that damage to the environment can worsen natural disasters, Klaus Toepfer, head of the U.N. Environment Programme, told Reuters.

Destruction of coral reefs and mangrove forests in some areas struck by the tsunami may have worsened the devastation of the wave.

“You have to use the environment (to help prevent) natural disasters,” he said. “The conviction has grown that we need the integration of nature in the early warning system.”

Toepfer later called for a multi-hazard warning system for all forms of potential disasters, whether natural such as hurricanes and tsunamis, or man-made ones such as oil and chemical spills.