KOBE-Hoping to dispel charges of unilateralism leveled at the United States during the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, the country's chief negotiator said Friday that Washington was willing to work with others on a permanent tsunami-warning system.

``The United States is not proposing itself as a single leader or an alternative to the United Nations,'' Mark P. Lagon, deputy assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, told Japanese reporters.

In the conference's forums where countries such as France, Germany and India have proposed various warning-system setups, the United States has been seen as trying to steal the show for focusing on a warning center already set up in Hawaii.

U.S. Ambassador Howard Baker had made a push for the center Thursday, when he said the United States was committed to enhancing and expanding the functions of the Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center to monitor the Indian Ocean and eventually the world.

The U.S. delegation called for a meeting with Japanese journalists to clarify its position.

The United States is interested in helping provide a leadership role in a multinational endeavor, Lagon said, and hopes to engage more partners when an Earth-surveillance summit is held in Brussels next month.

Lagon also said Washington is interested in working on a system through the Group on Earth Observations, a global-monitoring organization with 55 nations as members, including Japan.

Lagon said that the U.S. delegation had held informal sessions with several delegations, including Japan, Germany and India, to discuss their warning-system proposals.

``We discussed our various technical proposals, and we made it clear that we think that there should be just one framework that is multilateral, coordinating the generous offers of Germany, the special concerns and technological know-how of India, and so on,'' he said.

``We found that we are much closer to each other than we expected.''

Lagon also said that the United States supported the United Nations taking a lead role in coordinating the creation of the system.(IHT/Asahi: January 22,2005)