UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urges the international donor community to keep their pledges to donate over 2 billion US dollars for relief operations and reconstruction in countries hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami at the UN headquarters in New York Jan. 3, 2005. (Xinhua Photo/Zhao Peng)

    JAKARTA, Jan. 6 (Xinhuanet) -- UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said here Thursday that the Dec. 26 unprecedented natural disastertakes unprecedented global cooperation to cope with, calling the international community to wake from the "nightmare."

    Annan is here to attend the Special ASEAN Leaders' Meeting on Aftermath of Earthquake and Tsunami which opened Thursday morning in Jakarta, capital of this worst-hit country in the calamity.

    The one-day emergency summit is being held under the auspices of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), along with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

    Annan joined other grim-faced heads of state or government, ministers and senior officials of international organizations in observing one-minute silence for tsunami victims before Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono addressed the opening session as chairman of the special meeting.

    At the opening of the summit, Annan said the tsunami death tollwill be likely over 150,000 and the exact tsunami death toll will never be known.

    Country delegations led by the heads of state or government areAustralia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam.

    Countries represented by ministers are India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the United States, and Canada.

    The international organizations participating in the summit are the Asian Development Bank, the European Union, the United Nations World Health Organization, the World Bank and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

    Officials from four European countries - the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands - as well as ministers from East Timor are attending the summit as observers.

    Annan is due to make a fact-finding trip to Banda Aceh after the meeting which concludes in the afternoon.

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