HONG KONG Tsunami aid and beyond: II The proposal by Britain to grant tsunami-affected countries an international debt moratorium is wrong-headed. Paradoxically, though, good could flow from the suggestion, which is expected to be discussed next week by the Paris Club of rich country creditors. The proposal is wrong-headed because the losses have been primarily human rather than economic. The devastation in Aceh is an enormous human tragedy, but it is not a significant blow to the economy of Indonesia, a nation of 205 million people. Aceh's four million were already some of Indonesia's poorest because of years of insurgency. Of all the countries affected, only Sri Lanka and the Maldives seem likely to suffer major economic loss, as opposed to human loss, because of the importance of tourism and, in Sri Lanka's case, coastal fishing. Thailand has plenty of alternative tourist destinations and the setback from the tsunami is likely to prove far less than that caused by SARS, or even avian flu. India's losses are localized and tiny relative to its economy. While Burma's losses are probably much bigger than officially admitted, the ruling generals have little known interest either in economic or humanitarian considerations. A debt moratorium is also wrong-headed because it ascribes to the tsunami an entirely different character than disasters in other developing countries, which have been at least as damaging economically, and, at the local level, as significant in human terms. The 30,000 lives lost in the Bam earthquake a year ago were in a confined area. More recently, nearly 2,000 people were killed by typhoon-generated floods and landslides in the northern Philippines - losses proportionately bigger than India's from the tsunami. Yet thus far the International Red Cross has achieved only 40 percent of its target for Philippine relief. Floods in Bangladesh last year killed 1,000 and left one million homeless. And the appalling Indian Ocean tsunami death toll is probably still less than the 300,000 who perished in Bangladesh's typhoon-driven floods in 1970, or the 140,000 who perished in the 1991 floods, or the 250,000 who perished in 1976 in China's Tangshan earthquake. Asian commentators have not failed to note that the response of wealthy countries to the tsunami has been driven at least in part by their own human losses, and subsequently by a degree of competition over who is seen to provide the largest amounts of relief or the most effective delivery teams. A moratorium is also not favored by the better-off countries, such as Thailand, because it might hurt their credit standings. However, there are also two ways in which good could come of the moratorium proposal. First, it is a clear breach of the principle which has long limited debt relief - that any relief be accompanied by economic and governance reforms laid down by the creditors. Niggardly attitudes to such relief, together with the pathetic level of new aid disbursements, have long made a mockery of grandiose proclamations such as the Millennium Development Goals. Western leaders pay frequent lip service to these, but consistently fail to put their money where their mouth is. If Indonesia can get tsunami-driven relief, then surely the Philippines is entitled to it as well for its typhoons - not to mention the Mount Pinatubo eruption, whose economic losses through the destruction of huge areas of farmland were permanent. Ditto much of Africa for AIDS, and various countries for droughts and other natural disasters that caused major economic as well as human losses. In short, the tsunami debt proposal can be a springboard for getting more capital to those developing countries that do not have access to private sources. Second, if there is to be a linkage between international debt relief and disaster relief, a much more effective body is needed to implement it. The international response to the tsunami has been impressive in terms of money and material, but less so in coordination. Surely there is place here for a greater role for the United Nations, but in partnership rather than rivalry with the United States and other powers. Why not create a standing UN disaster task force which can draw directly on the assets of national governments and charitable agencies in the same way as UN peacekeepers draw on national forces?