Indian red tape may have cost lives

Indian officials tangled in bureaucratic red tape lost 30 precious minutes after they received an alert from an air force base in a remote island about the tsunami hurtling toward the coast, a government official admitted today.

The official said the urgent message from the Indian air force base in the Andaman and Nicobar islands in the Indian Ocean was not directed right away to the federal Ministry of Home Affairs, responsible for dealing with natural disasters.