Aid workers in Indonesia warned on safety

BANDA ACEH - Indonesia told aid workers helping tsunami victims in its worst-hit region Aceh on Tuesday not to venture beyond two large cities on Sumatra island because of possible attack by militants.

Indonesia's head of relief operations said agencies would need permission to work outside the provincial capital Banda Aceh and the ravaged west coast town of Meulaboh.

Asked if Aceh -- where the Indonesian army and separatist rebels have clashed for decades -- was unsafe for international aid workers, Budi Atmaji said: "Yes, in some places."

Indonesian military chief General Endriartono Sutarto said in Banda Aceh he had tried to contact the GAM (Free Aceh Movement) rebels about a full ceasefire, "but I got no response up to now".

But the rebels said they would never attack aid workers -- who in turn said they were not overly worried.

"In no way has it impacted or diminished our goal to move about or to access populations," said senior UN relief official Kevin Kennedy.

Huge waves triggered on December 26 by an earthquake about 150km out at sea from Meulaboh killed at least 157,000 people around the Indian Ocean -- 105,500 in Indonesia, 30,000 in Sri Lanka and 15,000 in India.

Many of the more than 5000 killed in Thailand were tourists from Europe and round the world.

Interpol and 20 national police forces launched history's biggest disaster victim identification system to unravel the mesh of forensic data from bodies, hundreds of which were to be exhumed for checks after hasty burials right after the tsunami.

Experts at the makeshift police headquarters on the tsunami-hit island of Phuket said putting names to all the corpses -- cross-referencing dental records, fingerprints and DNA from bodies and from the missing -- could take months.

Interpol said it would also help identification efforts in other countries, but along the coast of Sri Lanka, Indonesia and elsewhere, thousands of victims lie buried in unmarked graves.

Sri Lanka said it was renewing efforts to enforce a law barring people from building within 300m of the sea. Thousands of those killed by the tsunami were living in illegally constructed homes along the coast.

On India's remote Andaman islands, the sea again washed into the heart of the main city Port Blair at high tide, lapping at doors. People fled to nearby hillocks and many slept on the pavements on high ground. The water later receded.

The United Nations said international donors had acted with record speed to meet a near US$1 billion ($1.44 billion) appeal for immediate aid, with more than 70 per cent already raised.

"This has never happened before," UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said after more than 80 states met in Geneva to discuss the UN call, as well as longer term assistance to affected areas round the Indian Ocean.

"It is very important we get money early on ... Hunger doesn't wait, disease doesn't wait," said Egeland.

Total international donations have been unprecedented, with governments, agencies and individuals promising over US$7 billion.

The European Union's Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said the 25-nation bloc wanted to help tsunami-hit countries by lowering tariff barriers for their exports to Europe.

"There are trade measures we can use to assist rebuilding in the countries affected by the disaster, notably by speeding up measures to improve their access to our markets," Mandelson said in a statement.

Aceh is the focus of global aid efforts.

Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said Indonesia and GAM separatists had reached "a gentlemen's agreement" not to launch an offensive and to ensure help reached the needy.

"It is not a ceasefire in the sense of a formal agreement ... but this is a practical way to allow both sides, particularly our troops, to help the victims," he told the BBC.

Both sides made conciliatory gestures after the tsunami but have since accused each other of initiating clashes.

A militant Islamic group in the world's most populous Muslim nation warned foreign aid agencies in Aceh not to stray from their humanitarian mission.

"We can work together. But if they came here with some hidden agenda -- colonialism, imperialism or missionary, I think this is very, very dangerous," said Hilmy Bakar Almascaty, a leader of the Islamic Defenders Front.

The very scale of the aid has brought its own problems, corruption among them.

"The government faces a second tsunami of aid," said Luky Djani of Indonesia Corruption Watch. "They are deluged by the huge amount of donations and they don't know how to manage and how to deliver it in the right way."

UN officials said they would adopt new steps to show they were using the money well, such as setting up a website on which the public could track every tsunami aid dollar.

A German brothel owner said she was so moved by the plight of the tsunami's survivors that she is donating part of her takings from clients.

"It's not every day you can make a charitable gesture by going to a brothel," said Mercedes Mueller, who is giving five euros ($9.55) of the 39-euro entrance charge clients pay.

- REUTERS