Thursday, April 21 2005 12:08 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Jakarta: India today (Apr 21, 2005) said the issue of Asian-African Cooperation in reducing the risk of disasters needs to be urgently looked into in the backdrop of last year's deadly tsunami that ravaged several coasts in the world.

"Disaster risk reduction needs to be an essential investment for sustainable development. We cannot only limit our focus and resources on responding to disaster. We must also reduce the risks of disaster," External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh told an Asian African Ministerial Meeting in Jakarta ahead of the Asia Africa summit beginning in Jakarta tomorrow (Apr 22, 2005).

Asking his counterparts from Asia and Africa to take note that natural hazards need not inevitably lead to widespread disaster, he said they could be handled if a country's social economic system was resilient to the impact of natural disasters.

"The best way that we can honour the dead is by protecting the living," he told the meeting.

He said just as the 1955 Bandung meet had demonstrated the ability for the countries to work together for the common welfare of the peoples of the two continents, "It is only appropriate that we should discuss ways in which we can cooperate to reduce the risk of disaster."

The Minister said a joint approach could complement national efforts and allow the countries to pool their respective strengths and complementarities effectively and efficiently.

A spokesman for the Africa Asian summit said the meet would discuss efforts to anticipate and handle the aftermath of tsunamis.

"The earthquake and tsunami that hit almost 13 countries on December 26 last year has been a lesson for all the countries in particular those in Asia and Africa to be more alert towards the possibility of the natural disaster happening," Sudjadnan Hadiningrat, Indonesian Foreign Minister's secretary general, who is also the secretary general of the meeting's organising committee said in Jakarta.

He said that the summit would produce a declaration on the political and philosophical basis to strengthen cooperation and awareness of the Asian and African nations in many fields including in handling tsunamis.

More than 200,000 people were killed and 150,000 went missing in Indonesia's Ache province alone.