BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - The United States is eager to end its military tsunami mission as soon as other nations are ready to take over, the U.S. deputy secretary of defense said Saturday. The United Nations began paying survivors in Indonesia to clear rubble.

Indonesia has expressed unease with the number of foreign troops on its territory and wants them out by the end of March.

"As soon as our military folks can pass these responsibilities on to other folks ... and make sure the job gets done, we will be happy," said Paul Wolfowitz, who was visiting Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

He also said he hopes the U.S. military's role in the relief mission will be finished well before the end of March.

"I would hope that we would not be needed (in the region) as a military long before March," he said during the flight to Asia, according to a transcript of his remarks released at the Pentagon.

The U.S. military has 24 Navy ships, one Coast Guard vessel and about 15,000 military personnel involved in the relief effort in southern Asia. Those include 2,000 Marines who are ferrying aid workers and transporting food to victims in Indonesia, the hardest-hit country, where more than 110,000 people died.

Hundreds of troops from Australia, Singapore, Germany and other nations are also helping the relief effort, along with U.N. agencies and scores of nongovernment aid groups.

Later Saturday, Wolfowitz flew to Indonesia's Aceh province, where a U.S. military helicopter took him on a tour of the tsunami-ravaged coastal areas.

A huge earthquake and the tsunamis it spawned killed more than 157,000 people across 11 countries, triggering an unprecedented global response.

Wolfowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, said cooperation with Jakarta has been good.

"For any country it is sensitive to have foreign troops on your territory. It would be sensitive in the United States and I can tell you that it is extremely sensitive in Indonesia," he said. "What's remarkable is that it has caused no problems to date."

In Aceh, the U.N. Development Program began paying thousands of tsunami survivors about $3 a day to clear rubble and debris.

"They are trying to hire local people to do this as part of stimulating the economy and getting some sort of livelihood back" for survivors, said a spokesman, William Bergman.

The U.N. refugee organization, meanwhile, distributed 10,000 five-person tents to survivors in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, said spokesman Mans Nyberg. Another 10,000 tents were on their way. Eventually, the UNHCR and Indonesian government want to house survivors in barracks-style shelters.

Efforts to keep epidemics at bay intensified, with the United Nations speeding up its measles vaccination drive after 20 cases of the disease were reported across Aceh.

Tetanus also has been detected in 67 people, said Medecins Sans Frontiers, or Doctors Without Borders, and because the disease has an incubation period of up to 60 days, that number is expected to jump soon.