On Wednesday, a plan was agreed with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to set up a seismographic tsunami warning network for the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian region.

Technical exchanges will be strengthened with ASEAN countries, said Chen Jianmin, director of the China Seismological Bureau, adding that his bureau promised to offer countries and organizations information from China's national seismographic network. 

According to Chen, ASEAN members also welcomed China's proposal to host an Asian conference on disaster reduction in the near future.

He said it is also important for China to improve its existing earthquake-warning system along its coastline, which is 18,000 kilometers long and not free from the threat of tsunamis.

Walter Mooney, a senior research seismologist at the US Geological Survey, said the workshop provided good ideas. "To create a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean is rather difficult because in some cases the distance from the earthquake and tsunami to land is very small," he said.

Laura Kong, director of UNESCO's International Tsunami Information Center, said the risks of tsunami exist to different degrees in all oceans.

(China Daily January 27, 2005)