Indonesia's Health Ministry yesterday added more than 70,000 to its tally of those killed by the tsunami last month, which would significantly raise the overall death toll to more than 221,100.

But the Health Ministry's figures differed greatly from Indonesia's Social Affairs Ministry, whose tally is relied upon by the Indonesian Embassy in Washington as well as the Associated Press Embassy spokeswoman Ellen Tambunan cautioned that this latest figure must still be confirmed.

The total death toll, using figures from the Social Affairs Ministry and other governments in each country, is at least 162,228, according to the AP. The United Nations on Tuesday listed the dead at 165,493.

The discrepancies point to the difficulty in determining how many people died in the Dec. 26 disaster in a region where communications remain spotty.

The U.S. death toll is 35: 18 confirmed deaths and 17 presumed dead, according to the State Department. The agency still is working on 261 inquiries about the whereabouts of Americans, down from 26,000 initially.

U.S. doubts U.N. can run warning system

KOBE, Japan — With multiple nations putting forward projects for a tsunami-warning system, the United Nations said yesterday it should set up the system and extend it globally, but the United States voiced doubts about the U.N.'s ability to run such a program.

U.N. officials at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan, called yesterday for coordination of efforts — and insisted on their own central role in marshaling the expertise and setting up the system.

But Mark Lagon, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, said the United Nations "has to prove it has the capacity to do so."

U.N. officials announced yesterday the launching of the International Early Warning Program, meant as an umbrella organization to coordinate efforts by various U.N. agencies to create a global warning system for all kinds of natural disasters, such as droughts, floods and landslides.

The model for the Indian Ocean tsunami-warning network is an existing system established in the Pacific in 1965 and which provides early tsunami warnings to 26 nations.