Maldivian Foreign Minister Fathulla Jameel said the death and damage in the Indian Ocean atoll nation could have been minimised if authorities had been alerted when the tsunamis began after an undersea earthquake near Indonesia.

"The research and information is there. But unfortunately the international scientific community works in strange ways. They don't want to share their information with us," Jameel told AFP.

"No one told us about the tsunami. We were hit one and half hours after Sri Lanka. No one alerted us. Sri Lanka itself was hit several hours after the earthquake and I presume no one told them either."

Jameel's criticism came as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan arrived here for a first-hand assessment of the destruction wrought in what is regarded as one of southern Asia's most expensive tourist destinations.

Official figures show 82 people were killed and 26 reported missing after the December 26 tsunamis swept across the Indian Ocean, killing nearly 160,000 people in 11 countries.

Jameel said the seven-member South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, which was due to hold a summit in Dhaka Sunday, would now discuss the tsunami tragedy affecting four member states when they hold the rescheduled meet on February 7.

However, he said a SAARC initiative alone to set up an early warning system would be insufficient. He called for a wider effort to involve all Indian Ocean states.

"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, adding that sea walls needed to be built as on the main island Male.

However, he said if the Maldives had been alerted to the impending sea surge on December 26, they would have been better prepared to meet the disaster as people on the beaches could have been warned.

The Maldives is a low-lying nation of 1,192 coral islands scattered about 850 kilometers (550 miles) across the equator and most of the islets are less than a meter (three feet) above sea level.

Visiting World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn said the country had suffered enormous emotional damage too because locals had been living with the fear of global sea level rise.

"This (tragedy) has to be viewed in the context of the emotional damage it has caused. People had feared about global warming and sea level rise. And with this, the fear is that if it can happen once, it can happen again," Wolfensohn said.

Wolfensohn met with President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, one of the top campaigners against global warming, and other leaders here before flying to remote atolls where there had been severe destruction to homes, boats and jetties.

Government spokesman Ahmed Shaheed said infrastructure built over a period of two decades had been washed out. The loss jetties of smaller islands is seen as a major blow to economic activity in far flung regions.

He said Annan would be flown to the remote Kolhufushi island, an hour from the capital Male by sea plane, where all 878 inhabitants are now forced to sleep in traditional fishing boats known as dhonis.

Annan will also visit Vilufushi island where all the 1,156 residents have been moved out to four nearby islands that escaped relatively unscathed in the sea surge caused by an underwater earthquake near Indonesia.

Tourism, the mainstay of the islands' economy, was badly hit by the giant waves, but a few tourists have kept coming to some of the resorts that escaped with only flooding but no major structural damage.

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