Your Majesty, Excellencies and Dear Colleagues,

Your Excellency UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan,

Distinguished Delegates,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We have just completed our deliberations on our coordinated and concerted response to the tragedy of 26 December 2004 and the crisis taking place in its aftermath.

In the spirit of solidarity, we have threshed out ways and means of intensifying the current relief and rehabilitation work being carried out in the stricken areas. More important, we have established a system by which this massive effort can be carried out in a more coordinated manner.

We have, moreover, taken the first steps toward ensuring our preparedness to quickly and effectively deal with natural disasters in the future—through transnational, multi-sectoral collaboration.

We have directly appealed to the United Nations Secretary-General in person to appoint a Special Representative to enhance coordination among donor countries, international organizations and non-governmental relief organizations with the governments of affected countries.

We have requested the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank and other international financial institutions to provide the funds necessary to ensure the viability and sustainability of national rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes.

We have agreed to establish a Regional Disaster Early Warning Centre for the Indian Ocean region.

In the framework of ASEAN, we have decided to establish a stand-by arrangement for the use of military and civil defense personnel and logistics for disaster relief operation.

We will also be setting up an ASEAN Humanitarian Assistance Centre and an ASEAN Disaster Information-sharing and Communication Network.

Your Majesty, Excellencies,

We close this meeting with a sense of having done all that we can feasibly accomplish at the moment.

We have no illusions that we have resolved the crisis at hand: the tasks of relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction that we have to carry out will take five to ten years, with resources beyond the means of any single country. We have a long way to go.

Nevertheless we know that we have made a sensible beginning. And we know that we can build reasonable and realistic hopes on that beginning. And that if we strive hard enough, in concert and with transparency and trust for one another, our children will be safer for our efforts.

That is the only way we can honour the memory of the nameless thousands who died in this horrible disaster—the only way we can give meaningful consolation to the countless widows and orphans and all those who lost their loved ones in this tragedy.

Indeed, let us make this world a safer place to live in—by simply and finally learning to care more for one another.

Let me now thank every one of you for caring enough to come here and to join hands with us in a difficult and sad but absolutely necessary task.

May God bless your journey home. May the Almighty heal the wounds of our shared grief.

I now declare this meeting closed.

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