Delegates meeting in Kobe, Japan, negotiated late for a second straight evening to seal a deal before the five-day conference of 150 countries closes Saturday.

Salvano Briceno, head of the UN disaster reduction group leading the conference, said the final document would be general with the United Nations giving itself a year to set more specific guidelines.

"Many people, the vast majority, would prefer something stronger, more precise and more detailed. That is one issue on which there was not much difference," Briceno told AFP.

"Everyone would have liked to identify specific targets with specific indicators to know how progress advances, we could have said for example that a number of schools or hospitals be made safe in the next 10 years," he said.

Briceno blamed the lack of specifics on the difficulties of sorting out views amid a surge of interest in disaster reduction following the tsunamis which have killed some 220,000 people.

"We could have done more if we had not had the tsunami, had more time to focus on the framework for action. Now it may be a bit simpler than some would like," Briceno said.

Briceno had announced on Thursday a broad agreement to let the United Nations take the lead in building a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean amid offers from donor countries to share their technology.

But talks continued largely on how specific the language should be in setting standards for countries, diplomats said.

"We are concerned that the final document will have wording that will not be meaningful," said Eva Calvo, a spokeswoman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

One Western diplomat said that most countries hit by the tsunamis had hurriedly sent delegations to Kobe and were concerned about being forced by donor countries to make financial commitments.

Briceno said, however, that a major issue was resources: whether to devote funding from development or humanitarian budgets to take account of the need to reduce disaster risks.

The United Nations has proposed that all donor countries for the next 10 years devote 10 percent of their aid to measures that prevent or lessen the impact of disasters before they happen.

Briceno said the tension was whether the burden should come from humanitarian funds usually spent on emergencies or development budgets preoccupied with scourges such as poverty and AIDS.

The reason for the lengthy discussions "is not so much a matter of countries as systems," he said.

Another controversy which has stirred negotiations was climate change.

The United States, which has rejected the Kyoto protocol which requires gas emission cuts, had gone on record opposing references to global warming in the final declaration, saying the meet should avoid the controversial issue.

Briceno said small island nations which fear global warming had pushed to go stronger on the issue than is likely in the final documents.

"It is a real misunderstanding," Briceno said.

"This conference is not about climate change," he said. "The issue is that we need to reduce vulnerability to all hazards, whether to human or natural causes."

The meeting took on a new role after the tsunamis amid outrage that Indian Ocean nations had no warning when giant waves battered their coasts.

Australia, Germany, Japan and the United States have all promoted using their tsunami prediction technology in the Indian Ocean. The United Nations will sort out the differences with the aim of putting a regional system in place in 12 to 18 months.

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