When Colin Powell visited the Thai resort island of Phuket soon after the Indian Ocean tsunami struck, he talked to reporters outdoors, not far from kids playing football. There was none of the intense security which usually surrounds a US Secretary of State, no frisking, no metal detectors, no bag searches, just worried Secret Servicemen and a Thai sniffer dog who preferred a nap. Nobody had time for the formal trappings of a visit by a top representative of the world?s only superpower.

Little more than a week later, Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin landed on Phuket yesterday with two film crews and an entourage filling four vans to find out what his foundation could do to help. He was happy to give interviews to text reporters on an island recovering rapidly from the damage, but film crews were told to stay away from him because famed US talk show host Oprah Winfrey had exclusive rights to the pictures.

?It?s all about the most vulnerable, the children of Phuket,? Martin said. ?It?s all about learning and seeing which ways I can help.? But visits like these ? to be followed this weekend by the arrivals of the prime ministers of Sweden, Finland, Norway and Canada ? create animated debate among aid workers about whether they are useful or mere distractions.

?Public interest remains, but it needs to be stimulated a litle so people are aware of what?s going on,? UNICEF spokesman John Budd said in Indonesia.

In fact, world politicians have shown restraint in staying away from Aceh on Indonesia?s Sumatra island, where the tsunami created the greatest havoc and the biggest loss of life as it killed more than 150,000 people around the Indian Ocean. Powell and United Nations Secretary Kofi Annan flew over the devastation, but landed only briefly. Australian Prime Minister John Howard, in Jakarta for an aid summit, said he would be too much of a distraction and wouldn?t go.

Stricken southern areas

?I frankly think that at the moment the resources of the military and so forth in Aceh are better employed looking after the people who?ve been hurt,? Howard said. Indian politicians had no such qualms. Local and state poliliticans flocked to stricken southern areas in long convoys which clogged the narrow streets of seaside fishing villages and towns and created gridlock. Many were accompanied by trucks of food, clothes or medicine which were handed out willy-nilly and the arrival of important ones prompted local officials to drop everything to coordinate their visit and accompany them. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh put off such visits early on, fearing it could disrupt rescue and aid efforts. When he visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, that?s exactly what happened.

Still, getting the story onto television screens and into newspapers around the world is what matters, experts say. Mihir Bhat, director of India?s Disaster Mitigation Institute, cites the example of former US President Bill Clinton?s visit to Gujarat two months after an earthquake killed 20,000 people in the western Indian state in 2001. The telegenic Clinton helped keep the public?s attention on a disaster that might otherwise have faded from memories, he said.

Suriwan Mankong, a 21-year-old student who clung on to a coconut tree after her one-storey concrete house was swept away on the Thai mainland north of Phuket and is now living in a tent, hopes Ricky Martin will have the same effect. ?He?s a foreigner who cares about Thai people and I hope I?ll get to see him. He might forget us in a few months, but I hope he doesn?t,? she said near Khao Lak, where most of the 5,300 people killed in Thailand died and which Martin will visit today.

So did Bangkok-based American Kerry Hooper, a volunteer helping out in the area, but he was more cynical. ?When people like this come, if they bring donations or go to other places to get donations, fine,? he said. ?Otherwise they?re just showboating, saying ?look at me, look how compassionate I am.?

Dominic WHITING

INDIAN OCEAN

UN readies tsunami alert system

■ The United Nations should be ready to launch a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean by June 2006 with the rest of the world to follow a year later, the official in charge of the programme says. The Indian Ocean system will cost about $ 30 million (16 million pounds), with most of that paid for by donor nations, said Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

?If everything goes according to plan, the initial system should, provisionally, be put in place by June 2006,? Matsuura told a news conference on Wednesday. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has championed a worldwide tsunami warning system and donors have been willing to fund it since the December 26 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The alert system has taken centre stage at a UN conference on small islands, held this week in the Mauritian capital. ?Today, as a result of this terrible catastrophe, we can see more clearly not only the challenges facing small island states, but also their relevance to the entire world,? Annan told delegates at the conference.

Thousands of the 156,000 tsunami victims may have been spared had warning reached countries like Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Somalia before the wave struck. ?We have to have international funding, but the affected countries themselves must make maximum efforts,? Matsuura said.That would include spending money to set up their own local warning systems and alert centres, and teaching residents how to react to a warning, he said.

Experts say getting alerts from a regional centre to affected countries is easy with existing UN communications, but speeding word to the remotest areas is the biggest challenge. Many lack the necessary modern communications.

The June 2006 target date was tentative and would only be for the basic, internationally-supplied parts of the system, he said. The needed country-level work may lag behind, especially in the poorest nations.?You should not assume that all these requirements would be met by then,? Matsuura said.

He said the cost for rest of the world was tentatively $130 million. Much of the Pacific already has a tsunami warning system. The other regions requiring warning systems are in the southwest Pacific, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.

Once set up, they would be linked to the existing alert networks to form a global whole, Matsuura said.

C. Bryson HULL