"We are calling for doctors, Sri Lanka's doctors who are working abroad, to come back for the next two to three weeks," she told Britain's Sky News television channel during a visit to London.

"Any doctors of any nationality who would like to come," she also suggested.

"In the next week we could have further troubles with diseases being carried by water and that kind of thing," Kumaratunga warned:

"We need medicaments and then we need to start rebuilding very fast....

100,000 people have lost their homes and it could be even nearly 200,000."

The president admitted her island state had not been well equipped to meet such disasters.

"We've never known a disaster like this in many centuries of our history," she continued: "As we are not on any fault line or that kind of thing, we haven't had tidal waves, nor big storms, nor earthquakes, we've only had floods from time to time, not very serious either.

"We are not well equipped. We have an extensive medical service, we have people who can do it, our administrative service goes right down to the village level, there are people who can be mobilised, but we don't have an institutionalised disaster management system."

"Today I spoke to the Indian prime minister," said Kumaratunga: "We agreed we had to have a warning system, a disaster management system for the region very fast."

Asked about the number of Sri Lankan victims, she said there could be 4,000 or more.

In Colombo, a top relief official and Tamil separatist rebels said late Sunday at least 4,300 people, mostly children and the elderly, were confirmed dead and many more missing.

The government's top relief coordinator, Lalith Weeratunga, said 3,500 people were confirmed killed following Sunday's tidal wave, according to reports up to 1600 GMT in areas outside the control of the Tamil Tigers.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said they had recovered the bodies of at least 800 people, raising to the country's death toll to 4,300.

Asked about landmines laid during civil strife and found floating in water, the prime minister told television:

"That may be a good thing. All the landmines will be made ineffective by the water."

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.