The UN's Asian regional commission called Monday for increased efforts to complete a tsunami warning system, after some 600 people died last week when killer waves struck Indonesia's Java island.
Indonesian officials have come under mounting criticism for failing to issue a specific tsunami warning after a 7.7-magnitude undersea earthquake sparked the disaster that devastated the town of Pangandaran.
The tragedy came less than two years after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed 220,000 people in a dozen countries.
"The Pangandaran tsunami reminds us of the challenge to ensure that all coastal communities are safe from tsunamis, not only those affected in 2004," Kim Hak-Su, head of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), said in a statement.
Indonesian officials said hundreds of text messages had been sent out by the national meteorological agency after the quake, but they contained only its coordinates and no tsunami warning.
Regional monitors issued a tsunami warning only 19 minutes after the quake, but gaps in Indonesia's alert system prevented the message from reaching coastal communities in time.
Bangkok-based UNESCAP has tried to coordinate planning in countries around the region to develop a unified system of tsunami warnings, particularly in deciding how to relay warnings to people on the coasts.
Indonesia's country-wide warning system is not due to be in place until 2009.
