NEW DELHI, 8 November 2007 — Terrorism is capable of triggering disasters across borders, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday at an Asian conference on disaster-risk reduction here.
“Disasters know no political boundaries and we are all equally vulnerable to them. I firmly believe that this is one area where nations can — and indeed must — cooperate to find collective, cooperative solutions to the challenges that face them,” Manmohan said.
Urging delegates from 48 countries across Asia not to focus on natural disasters alone, Manmohan said that modern societies must come together to deal with man-made disasters as well, including industrial accidents and disasters caused by terrorist attacks, the PTI news agency reported.
Highlighting the significance of “coherent national strategies and national capabilities to handle these disasters,” Manmohan said past episodes have shown that a national response alone is not adequate. “While we have the necessary wherewithal in Asia to respond to disasters, we need more bilateral and regional cooperation to make effective use of our capabilities,” he said.
Describing the creation of Tsunami Early Warning System as a “good example of regional cooperation,” the prime minister said: “I hope we can sustain this effort and replicate it in other areas of disaster management and mitigation.” Referring to man-made disasters — be they industrial disasters or disasters caused by terrorists’ attacks, Manmohan said: “The threat of terrorism looms large in many parts of our region and could trigger disasters across borders. We must also learn to deal with new kinds of health disasters such as HIV, Avian Flu, which have emerged as new challenges all over the world. They have enormous social and economic consequences. Here again, we need improved methodologies for risk reduction, insurance as well as for mitigation.”
Manmohan said the biggest disasters came from the catastrophic effects of climate change.
Sonia Gandhi, Congress party president, said there was need for pro-active policies to evolve long-term measures and permanent solutions that anticipated the destructive power of disasters and minimized their effects.
The two-day Second Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction is to review the implementation of a framework of action adopted in Kobe, Japan, at the first such conference in 2005.
The conference is expected to identify gaps requiring concerted action in disaster-risk management and develop a regional agreement on further enhancing cooperation.
