The Japan Meteorological Agency plans to set up an information center by next March to monitor tsunami tidal waves in wide areas of the Pacific and provide information on them to relevant countries.

The round-the-clock Tsunami Information Center will monitor tsunamis in areas covering the northern and western Pacific areas,the Sea of Okhotsk off Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido and coastal areas of Indonesia, the agency announced Monday.

There was no tsunami warning system in nations around the Indian Ocean when these countries were hit by devastating tsunamisfollowing a magnitude 8.7 earthquake off Indonesia's Sumatra Island early Sunday.

Damage from the tsunami could have been lessened if a tsunami warning system had been in operation, the agency said.

The quake and subsequent tidal waves are believe to have killedmore than 20,000 people in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and other nations so far.

Japan's new system will be operated by a supercomputer which has been used since 1999 to forecast the size and estimated time of arrival of tsunamis in the event of an earthquake off the Sea of Japan.

Some nations in the Pacific have jointly established a system to monitor tsunamis following the devastating 1960 earthquake off Chile, and its information center is located in the United States,according to the agency.

But no system has been set up in the southern Pacific although relevant nations are discussing the idea of creating one at an early date, it said.