Twenty-four nations pledged on Wednesday at a US-led meeting to better coordinate their efforts against Somali piracy in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
Diplomats met privately at UN headquarters for the first time to talk about how to fight the rise of piracy off Somalia’s lawless coastline, where 11 vessels with 210 crew members are now in pirate hands.
“So much of this is synchronization and adding on to the great work that our sailors from, at this point, 16 different nations on the water are conducting,” the group’s chairman, US Assistant Secretary of State Mark Kimmitt, told reporters after the nearly day-long meeting.
“We believe that 2009 will be a year where we can turn this problem around if we come together as a group of nations, working not simply the military aspect, but the judicial aspect, the financial aspect, the industry aspect,” he said.
Kimmitt, who deals with political and military affairs, told reporters that so far, officials have found “no links” showing that the pirates are working for any established terrorist groups.
Most are believed to be former Somali fishermen.
But during the closed-door meeting, Kimmitt said there is “a sense, not fully developed” among US counter-piracy officials that there should be more focus on where the money is coming from to finance the pirates’ operations.
He suggested that pirates might be receiving financing by “external” or some other “private groups” that are helping pay for intelligence, logistics, GPS and communications devices.
The meeting was also presided over by representatives of Yemen, Britain, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Spain and Somalia.
In related news, Japan will send a warship to the pirate-infested waters off Somalia as early as April, the Nikkei Shimbun reported yesterday, as shipping industry leaders pressed the government to take immediate action.
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso will authorize a plan within the month for a destroyer to head to the waters off the lawless African nation, the report said, citing unnamed sources.
Asked about the report, a defense ministry spokeswoman said no timeline had been decided.
Meanwhile, pirates holding a Ukrainian cargo ship loaded with tanks have sacked Somali middlemen trying to secure its release and are negotiating directly with the owners, an associate of the gang said yesterday.
The MV Faina was carrying 33 Soviet-era T-72 tanks and other weapons when it was seized in September. The pirates initially demanded a US$20 million ransom, lowered to US$5 million.
Osman Farah, an onshore associate of the gang on the Faina, said his colleagues now expected more than US$5 million after they sacked the middlemen negotiating on their behalf.
“Somali brokers had been delaying the process by reporting only half, or less, of the ransom being offered,” Farah said by telephone from the coastal town of Haradheere.
The Faina’s owners could not immediately be reached for comment.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS