The whole story is here:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=516&e=11&u=/ap/20041227/ap_on_re_as/quake_warning_system_12When you read the story, you find out that the reason the "Asian" officials didn't issue any warnings was because, "governments around the region insisted they did not know the true nature of the threat because there was no international system in place to track tidal waves in the Indian Ocean — where they are rare — and they cannot afford to buy sophisticated equipment to build one."
Do you see the difference? If you're Asian and you don't have a warning system because you can't afford one, then you've "failed" when you don't issue a warning. Compare that to the * administration when alarm bells were sounding for years and months about OBL, where anti-aircraft defenses were set up in Genoa for the G8 in summer of 2001, where Ashcroft stopped flying commericallly, where a PDB was issued in August 2001 stating "OBL Determined to Strike in US," where an airplane ran into the WTC and employees were sent back to their offices before the second plane struck - and when the attacks happen, the media accepts that warnings couldn't be issued to New Yorkers because "none of us could have imagined that terrorists would use planes as missles."
Oh, BTW - such an early warning system for Tsunamis DOES exist in the Pacific - it's run by the USA. ("An international warning system in the Pacific was started in 1965, the year after tsunamis associated with a magnitude 9.2 quake struck Alaska. It is administered by the U.S-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Member states include all the major Pacific rim nations in North America, Asia and South America, as well as the Pacific islands, Australia and New Zealand." ).