Experts from the world over will attend a meeting on tsunami early warning system to be held in New Delhi on Jan. 21.

The meeting will be a precursor to the setting up of such a system in the Indian Ocean region, the Hindu, a leading English newspaper in the country, Monday quoted V. S. Ramamurthy, secretary in India's department of science and technology, as saying.

Ramamurthy said that the conference would bring together participants from India, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System, as well as experts from Japan, Canada, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

The system to be set up in the Indian Ocean region will, according to Ramamurthy, have three components for earthquake detection, tsunami detection and warning dissemination.

India had decided against an early warning system in the past because tsunamis were not known to occur in this part of the world and also because of the expense involved, Ramamurthy said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 17, 2005)