|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Tuesday, 25 January 2005 |
 |
|
 |
News | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
|
MALE, Monday (AFP) President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom has often warned that the sea could swamp the low-lying Maldives but he did not expect to see this happening before his very eyes. Gayoom, in an interview with AFP Monday, said his wife Nasreena had had an inkling that the tremor they felt on the morning of December 26 could trigger a tsunami. But he quickly dispelled such fears and went to work. A little later his wife called him with the first news that a tsunami was hitting a southern atoll about an hour away by sea plane from the capital. "I immediately looked out of my window upstairs and I saw - you know the sea wall - it wasn't there," Gayoom said at his new seafront two-storied office. "Water had completely submerged it." "First of all I did not know what was happening. I thought there was no wall," Gayoom said, adding he had feared for his nation of 1,192 tiny coral islands scattered some 850 kilometres (550 miles) across the Equator. "If this had happened to Male with the retaining wall, the other islands would have been more seriously affected." Gayoom, 67, said a later inspection showed the destruction was even worse than he had initially feared. "The infrastructure we built over a period of two decades was lost," Gayoom said adding that they would need over a billion dollars for reconstruction. The prospect of the Maldives being submerged had in the past added to the exoticism of the nation, a favourite destination for well-heeled honeymooners and worshippers of sun, sea and surf. Gayoom uses almost every international or regional gathering he attends to focus on the threat of rising sea levels due to global warming. But tsunamis were never considered because they had never been experienced in the region. Asked if he felt let down by the international community in its failure to reduce greenhouse gases, Gayoom said: "I think the international community could have done more." Some 82 people were killed and 26 reported missing in this archipelago of 300,000 Sunni Muslims after the December 26 tsunamis that swept over the atolls. "We are told to move away from the coastline or go to higher ground, but we have no place to go," Gayoom said. His foreign minister Fathulla Jameel in an interview earlier this month accused the international scientific community of not doing enough to share information and help mitigate the effects of natural disasters. "Having an early warning itself is not enough. Even if we get an early warning where can we go? Climb a coconut tree?" he asked. Gayoom said he needs "substantial and sustained aid" from the international community to recover despite his country's per capita income of 2,400 dollars. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
