The Boxing day tsunami will neither sink the booming Asian tourism nor do much harm to the world tourism, said World Tourism Organization (WTO) chief in Phuket on Tuesday.

WTO Secretary-General Francesco Frangialli told an emergency session of the organization's executive council that Southeast Asia's tourism has been in great expansion with 12 million new arrivals last year, or an increase of one third over the previous year.

Another reason for optimism is the fact that the tsunami affected countries just receive 3 percent of international visitors and the directly affected areas account for well under 1 percent, he said.

The world tourism will suffer "nothing but a glancing blow" and is expected to continue its rise in 2005 on the strength of economic growth and increased international trade, he said.

According to the latest WTO forecast released here Tuesday, the worldwide growth for international tourism will be at 5 percent to8 percent, in comparison with the 10 percent high rate recorded last year in the post-SAARS recovery.

The secretary-general pointed out that the catastrophe of the tsunami "represented a tragic end for an otherwise exceptional year for tourism."

Indonesia and India did not see their tourism hardware directly hit, but images of devastation have hurt their markets seriously. And other countries, such as Malaysia and the Seychelles, were "more superficially affected," he said.

Frangialli called for return of tourists to the tsunami-affected countries, which is "imperative for the recovery of local economies."

He also made an appeal to market source countries to encourage travels to tsunami-hit areas by timely adjusting their "travel advisories" when conditions there improve.

He expressed the hope that the tsunami-affected tourism industry's competitors in the Pacific, in the Mediterranean and in the Caribbean, will not to take advantage of the disaster.

"Any country that seeks to profit from the suffering of others would not be worthy of being a member of the WTO," he said, adding" in times of crisis, we are partners; we are no longer competitors."

(Xinhua News Agency February 2, 2005)