A month after the tsunami disaster, newspapers continue in their usual commentary about the tragedy through various interpretations.

As if it was some kind of benediction, salvation or otherwise what's been unanimously agreed is the global dimension of the disaster considering the many affected nations and the corresponding number of casualties belonging to those nations.

Apart from it, we also saw the opportunistic instincts of donor nations whose promise of relief aid was preconditioned, either with the cessation of rebellion in Aceh or an eye for political mileage.

For South East Asia, the impact of the disaster was also indeed an 'opportunity'. As how Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono put it, it is a chance to build on the 'culture of solidarity', which over the years has been notoriously absent.

How much of inkling there was to that 'culture' can only be seen in the pre-1997 days. Then the region 'abetted' by the depreciation of the Thai baht triggered a series of financial meltdowns throughout South East Asia, capped memorably by former Malaysian premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad' vitriol that pointed to a Jewish conspiracy theory.

When that was not enough, a series of spats involving Malaysia and Singapore put relations deeper into a freeze, highlighted by some unpleasant moments when Singapore athletes were jeered at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur.

The tenuous state of relations plunged further after the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. And when the United States took retaliatory military action against Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, the drift among Muslims and non-Muslims states in the grouping widened even further apart.