Asia-Pacific nations plan disaster drills

Singapore: Asia-Pacific states are discussing a plan to hold military-led disaster relief exercises in the Philippines next year, senior defence officials said on Wednesday.

At a defence dialogue on the sidelines of the annual meetings of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean), officials expressed the need to plan and test how member states could help each other during disasters such as the recent Myanmar cyclone, the China quake and Philippines ferry sinking.

"The United States was pushing for actual exercises among members of the Asean Regional Forum to be held in the Philippines next year," said a senior defence official from a Southeast Asian state, who declined to be named.

"The officials said typhoons and disasters are killing more people and causing more destruction in the last few years since the tsunami in 2004. So there was a need for countries in the region to better prepare and coordinate disaster response."

Another defence official said the planned exercise was still on the drawing board.

"We need more meetings to determine the actual size and shape of the disaster relief exercises, but it would definitely be held next year."

China has just hosted a table exercise on disaster planning and the US was pushing for an actual drill - the voluntary demonstration of response in disaster relief.

The Asean Regional Forum agreed to launch disaster management and emergency response procedures in 2006, two years after the tsunami killed 230,000 people.