Nepalnews.com Mercantile Communications Pvt. Ltd.

SAARC nations agree to set up disaster 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, agency reports said.

The agreement came at a meeting of South Asian officials in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, ahead of a Nov. 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.

"Cooperation in disaster preparedness and disaster management is a priority area for SAARC," said India's junior Foreign Minister, Edappakath Ahmed. SAARC stands for the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.

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

"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, Reuters news agency reported.

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 Hyderabad, the news report said. nepalnews.com by Nov 11 05