MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Tsunami deaths soar past 220.000.

An Indonesian government ministry yesterday dramatically raised the country's death toll from last month's tsunami, sending the overall total soaring and into disarray.

The nation's foreign minister, meanwhile, sought to reassure donor countries that billions of dollars pledged to aid victims of the disaster would not be siphoned off by corrupt officials.

The jump in Indonesia's estimated toll to 166,320 came after the nation's Health Ministry declared more than 70,000 people previously listed as missing as dead ? which would raise the number of lives lost in the 11-nation disaster zone to as high as 221,100. But confusion surrounded the tally, with another section of the government ? the Social Affairs Ministry ? sticking to its figure of 114,978.

Officials have frequently cautioned that compiling accurate figures for the dead or missing is almost impossible, and that a definitive total of dead may never be reached. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called on government agencies to get their numbers straight.

Eager to show that Indonesia will use international aid money responsibly and take a firm stand against corruption, Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda said the government had recently appointed accounting firm Ernst & Young to track international donations.

Foreign governments and international agencies have pledged around four billion dollars in aid to the region. Indonesia, regularly listed as one the world's most corrupt countries, is expected to get the largest chunk.

Japan issued a brief tsunami warning after a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck off its eastern coast, sending a scare through the vast zone still struggling to recover from last month's disaster. But officials said the waves generated were less than 30 centimeters high and posed little danger.

By contrast, the waves triggered by the Dec. 26 earthquake rose as high as 10 metres. At an international disaster conference in Kobe, Japan, the UN humanitarian chief said the United Nations should take the lead in creating a tsunami early-warning system in the Indian Ocean, similar to the one that exists in the Pacific.

International health officials said hundreds of thousands of people remain at risk of disease in Indonesia's Aceh province, as stretched medical teams attempt to prevent outbreaks of measles, malaria and diarrhea, contracting measles, malaria and other diseases.

Emergency medical workers are "straining to stay ahead of a wide range of threats to a severely weakened, still disoriented and beleaguered population," said Bob Dietz, the World Health Organization spokesman in the provincial capital of Banda Aceh. In southern Thailand, more than 20,000 Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs joined hands for an interfaith memorial service in a sports stadium to remember the tsunami victims.

Participants ? many dressed in white, a traditional color of mourning in Asia ? released paper hot air balloons into the sky, a Thai ritual meant to lift the spirits of the dead. In a rare show of unity in Sri Lanka, bitterly divided government and opposition leaders jointly launched a 3.5-billion-dollar project to rebuild homes after the disaster.