The Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS), Jos&ea­cute; Miguel In­sulza, ex­pressed dis­may and of­fered his con­do­lences and those of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion to the peo­ple and gov­ern­ment of Japan fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake that took a trag­ic toll on hu­man lives and ma­te­r­i­al dam­age. "I am dis­mayed by the vi­o­lence of the earth­quake and the bru­tal­i­ty of the tsuna­mi, and by their ter­ri­ble con­se­quences, the scope of which will un­for­tu­nate­ly be­come known on­ly in the next hours and days," Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al In­sulza said.

"Our hearts are with the gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Japan, whom we know to be a fight­ing peo­ple that will seek to over­come this new blow of na­ture though it may cause an im­mea­sur­able hu­man loss." The OAS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al ex­pressed con­cern about the ef­fect this phe­nom­e­non will have in var­i­ous coun­tries of the re­gion that have coast­lines along the Pa­cif­ic Ocean, and asked for calm and trust in the emer­gency mea­sures adopt­ed by the au­thor­i­ties. The head of the hemi­spher­ic or­gan­i­sa­tion as­sert­ed that the OAS is mak­ing it­self avail­able to the Japan­ese au­thor­i­ties to help in what­ev­er ways pos­si­ble, be it di­rect­ly or as a go-be­tween with its mem­ber states. "Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we in the Amer­i­c­as know too well the des­o­la­tion and dev­as­ta­tion that an event like this caus­es, as it hap­pened a lit­tle more than a year ago in Haiti and Chile, and we al­so know how use­ful, how pos­i­tive and com­fort­ing is the sup­port that comes from abroad."