Germany calls for global tsunami effort 20/01/2005 00:00

20 January 2005

BERLIN - Calling for a global effort to monitor tsunamis, lawmakers in Germany on Thursday took part in official state mourning ceremonies for the victims of the 26 December disaster which claimed 220,000 lives, among them scores of Germans.

In ceremonies at the Reichstag building in Germany, President Horst Koehler expressing the nation's condolences to the southern Asian countries which took the brunt of the catastrophe.

"We mourn for the dead from Germany," he said. "And we also mourn the many dead in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, in India, Thailand and the other countries in the Indian Ocean."
In his speech in the ceremonies held in the German parliament, the German president said the seaquake catastrophe should give cause to re-think the cooperation of the community of nations and spoke of the opportunities posed in the civil conflicts in Sri Lanka and Indonesia's Aceh province.

"When, if not now, will we find the strength to understand that our actions are also a kind of global domestic policy?" Koehler asked.

He noted that in Sri Lanka and Aceh, people from enemy camps had spontaneously helped each other out in the first hours and days after the disaster. The parties to the conflict should now seize on these human impulses.

Only then can the reconstruction be a success," said Koehler.

"We must all work together to rebuild the devastated coastal regions, to put needy families back on their feed economically, to ensure that children are not sold into slavery and to ensure that a global tsunami early-warning system is implemented to avert such loss of life in future," Koehler said. 

 DPA

Subject: German news