The head of the United Nations educational, scientific and cultural organisation told dozens of ministers meeting in Phuket to hash out a tsunami early warning system that it would need to embrace civil society participation if such an operation was to be effective.

"For example, in Aceh, Indonesia, the rapid delivery of warning messages could well exploit the wide distribution of Islamic mosques with established loud-speaker systems," UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura told the gathering according to a statement.

"In other countries ... alternative approaches may need to be employed, including local radio and traditional village communication structures."

He stressed that any permanent warning system would need to be wholly owned by participating nations, require "open, free and unrestricted exchange of data and information," and accommodate the sensitivities of local cultures.

The Phuket meeting comes after tsunamis triggered by a huge earthquake off the Indonesian coast barrelled across the Indian Ocean on December 26, devastating coastal areas in 11 countries and killing a presumed 283,000 people.

Matsuura said that as the region grapples with how to establish a long-term system, UNESCO was instituting an interim tsunami alert system.

"We do not need to start from scratch," he said in a speech read out by the UN Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) chief Patricio Bernal.

"We are planning the installation of six tsunami enabled sea-level stations in the eastern Indian Ocean and the upgrading of 15 more in the whole basin." One proposal involved the Japanese Meteorological Agency and the IOC Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre providing information and warnings from their monitoring systems to authorities in Indian Ocean countries, he said.

Matsuura also stressed the need to build tsunami warning systems for other regions at risk, including the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.