The Japanese weather agency and the US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, based in Hawaii, will give their tsunami alerts as a stop-gap measure until the Indian Ocean nations have their own system which is expected in mid-2006.

"As soon as these countries have systems to receive warning information, we will start providing information, as early as March," said Noritake Nishide, director of the Seismological and Volcanological Department at the Japan Meteorological Agency.

"To do that, we need to know who and which divisions are really responsible for taking, analyzing and disseminating our information to the public," Nishida said.

The Japanese agency was considering using so-called global telecom systems, which can instantly transmit data worldwide en masse, as well as by conventional means such as fax and the Internet.

"If we have no choice but to use the Internet, we need to make sure whoever receives our information knows what he is getting. If we use fax machines, there is a danger that some countries could receive warnings faster than others. So we would rather avoid using that," he said.

"And if they were confused by information from us and the US agency, I would suggest they take information with graver warnings," the official said.

He made his remarks at the end of a three-day seminar by officials from 11 nations battered by the giant waves to see how Japan's tsunami warning systems work.

Japan, home to 20 percent of the world's major earthquakes, has one of the world's most advanced systems to predict tsunamis and has tried to take a leading role in tsunami relief.

Japan, along with Australia, France, Germany and the United States, has offered to share its technology to build an Indian Ocean tsunami warning system which the UN hopes to have in place by mid-2006, with a global system a year afterward.

A meeting next month in Paris could decide the shape of the system.

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