The UN on Monday authorized foreign countries to send ships into Somali waters to combat a wave of piracy along the Horn of African country’s lawless coast.
The UN Security Council’s 15 members unanimously adopted a resolution, pushed by France and the US, that is in part a response to requests for help from both the Somali government and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Somalia’s 3,025km coastline is the longest in Africa and near key shipping routes that connect the Indian Ocean with the Red Sea.
More than a dozen pirate attacks have occurred this year alone; two more ships were attacked in the Gulf of Aden last week.
The resolution says that foreign nations’ ships cooperating with Somalia’s government during the next six months can “enter the territorial waters of Somalia for the purpose of repressing acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea.”
Transitional Somalian President Abdullahi Yusuf told Security Council members in Djibouti that “the issue of piracy is beyond our present means and capabilities.”
“Hence, we would like to request the Security Council to urgently adopt the draft resolution on piracy off the coast of Somalia,” he said.
Somalia’s fragile government, backed by Ethiopia, has been battling Islamist-led insurgents since early last year. Somalia lacks a navy and its transitional government has been struggling to assert control since it was formed in 2004 with UN help.
The US Navy also has led international patrols to try to combat piracy in the region.
Sailors on merchant ships say they typically do not carry the weapons that would be needed to fight off the small vessels carrying pirates armed with guns and machetes.
Indonesian Ambassador to the UN Marty Natalegawa said his nation approved the resolution despite some concerns that it might infringe on a UN treaty governing the high seas.
“We were assured that this focus on Somalia — it does not infringe international law. It does not create new customary international law,” Natalegawa said.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
POINTING FINGERS: The two countries have accused each other of firing first, with Bangkok accusing Phnom Penh of targeting civilian infrastructure, including a hospital Thai acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai yesterday warned that cross-border clashes with Cambodia that have uprooted more than 130,000 people “could develop into war,” as the countries traded deadly strikes for a second day. A long-running border dispute erupted into intense fighting with jets, artillery, tanks and ground troops on Thursday, and the UN Security Council was set to hold an emergency meeting on the crisis yesterday. A steady thump of artillery strikes could be heard from the Cambodian side of the border, where the province of Oddar Meanchey reported that one civilian — a 70-year-old man — had been killed and
RSS