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JAKARTA, Jan 5 (AFP) : A future without fear that tsunamis will again cause such huge loss of life is the main goal of an emergency summit in Jakarta Thursday bringing together leaders of the worst hit nations and key aid donors.
Little concrete progress can be hoped for from the snap one-day meeting, as a dozen premiers and foreign ministers vie for time with leading global groups on an agenda of vague commitments to rebuilding after last week's carnage.
But, ahead of the conference, the message has been clear from countries that have together lost at least 144,000 people: the world must unite to ensure that next time, everyone will be ready.
Countries around the Indian Ocean from Asia to Africa were caught off guard by the December 26 tsunami, with waves up to 10 metres high crashing into coastal communities and packed holiday resorts.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, one of the biggest post-disaster donors with 500 million dollars in a kitty now well over two billion, will be joined at the meeting by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, UN Secretary General Koffi Annan and the premiers of China and Australia.
Although primarily an ASEAN affair, foreign ministers including Britain's Jack Straw will be also be present with representatives from the European Union and leading aid and financial bodies including the World Bank.
"There are so many delegations and therefore there will not be enough time to express their opinions," said Indonesia's representative Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda, adding that a joint statement had been prepared in advance.
He declined to give details of the draft declaration but said it would contain the "solidarity and joint commitment to overcome the disaster" and a "concrete commitment" to long-term rebuilding and rehabilitation.
"It will also be discussed how countries in the Indian Ocean region can obtain technical assistance to apply an early warning system in the future, such as the one which exists for the Pacific Ocean," Wirayuda said.
UN experts say that an effective warning system, modelled on mechanisms that have existed around the Pacific Ocean for more than half a century, could have drastically cut casualty figures from the natural disaster.
Expectations are high that Jakarta's meeting will consolidate talks on the new mechanism begun by India, Thailand and Indonesia and likely to dominate the UN World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan from January 18.
Meanwhile Philippines Gloria Arroyo called for the extension of any warning mechanism to include all coastal nations.
For aid groups who have often struggled to work with disorganised government and military relief efforts, Thursday's meeting was seen as a chance to clarify their post-disaster purpose and the gravity of the task ahead.
Meanwhile, the EU trumpeted its key role in helping victims of south Asia's tsunami disaster Tuesday, as overall European aid seemed set to easily exceed half a billion euros ahead of an emergency donors' summit.
The European Commission, whose head will attend the summit Thursday in Jakarta, said the European Union (EU) and its member states had so far pledged 436 million euros, but forecast the figure will rise much further.
And in another sign of the EU bolstering its response to the catastrophe -- which may have claimed thousands of European tourists' lives -- the bloc announced that EU foreign ministers will meet for extraordinary talks Friday.
"There will be a substantial further funding decision fairly soon," said Simon Horner of the EU executive's Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO), which coordinates EU aid contributions, as well as relief efforts on the ground.
The biggest commitments to aid have come from Britain, Germany, France and Sweden, where the death toll among thousands of holidaymakers affected is feared to run into the hundreds if not thousands.
The European Commission, giving an updated overall aid figure, said the headline sum of 436 million euros included 23 million euros from its own funds while the rest came from the 25 EU countries.
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