China is preparing to send warships to fight rampant piracy off the coast of Somalia, the government said yesterday, a day after one of its commercial vessels foiled an attack near the African state.
“We are preparing and making arrangements to send naval ships to the Gulf of Aden to protect the sea lanes there,” foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao (劉建超) told journalists. “We will make a formal announcement when the time comes.”
Liu’s comments came after the state-run Global Times newspaper, citing maritime officials, said China would send two destroyers and a supply ship to the Gulf of Aden to help the international crackdown on piracy there.
The fleet will depart from the south sea naval base on Hainan after Dec. 25 for a three-month tour of the Somali coast, the paper said.
The developments came after the crew of a Chinese cargo ship fought off pirates in the Gulf of Aden on Wednesday with the help of a coalition of forces organized by the International Maritime Bureau.
Liu said that seven ships, either owned by Chinese shipping companies, carrying Chinese crews or carrying cargo from China, had been attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden during the first 11 months of the year.
China’s participation will be the first time in modern history that the nation’s navy has carried out a mission outside Chinese waters, said Shen Shishun (沈世順), an expert with the China Institute of International Studies (中國國際問題研究所), a government think tank.
China’s participation comes after the UN Security Council, in a unanimous vote on Tuesday, gave nations battling armed and increasingly audacious pirates in the Gulf of Aden a one-year mandate to act inside the lawless country.
“China welcomes the international cooperation on cracking down on Somalia pirates,” Liu said.
Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday there was almost no international support for a peacekeeping force that the US wants in Somalia.
Ban said that during the past four months he asked at least 50 nations and three international organizations to support the council’s request for a similar multinational force to stabilize Somalia.
“Not one nation has volunteered to lead,” Ban said. “The replies have been very lukewarm or negative ... There are one or two who have expressed their willingness to provide some troops.”
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said a day earlier that the US expects to convince the UN Security Council to approve by the end of the year a blue-helmeted force for Somalia.
The US and Somalia want a UN peacekeeping force to take over duties from the 53-nation African Union (AU), which made the request since it has far fewer resources than those of the UN.
“And while the conditions may not be auspicious for peacekeeping, they will be less auspicious if chaos reigns in Somalia and we have to turn at some point to peacemaking. Prevention is the issue here,” Rice told the council on Tuesday.
“The situation is not ripe, the conditions are not favorable to consider a UN peacekeeping operation,” Ban said. “The situation is very volatile and dangerous, risky for peacekeeping operations to operate there.”
Ban said the first priority should be to strengthen the AU mission.
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