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* Piracy attacks on rise, success rate down-EU commander
* Hijackers use stock exchanges to raise funds for piracy
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 30, 2010 – China's participation in an international
naval operation to protect ships from pirates off the coast of Somalia
should help improve maritime security in the Horn of Africa, an EU naval
commander said on Thursday.
China said late last year it would co-lead an international task force
fighting piracy in the waters around Somalia, where large numbers of
Chinese vessels ply the seas, carrying products back to resource and
energy-hungry China.
Captain Paul Chivers, Chief of Staff of EUNAVFOR Somalia, the European
Union's naval operation off the coast of Somalia, told reporters China's
decision was "extremely good news and will allow us to surge other
assets into the Somali basin, where pirate activity remains at an
all-time high."
He said it was not clear when China would be ready to assume its role as
co-leader of the anti-piracy force.
While hijackings in the Gulf of Aden have tapered off, "pirate activity
in the Somali basin has grown and grown exponentially," he said.
The Somali basin is a huge body of water in the western Indian Ocean,
comparable in size to the eastern coast of the United States, Chivers
said. Because of its vastness, naval forces monitor the area with
surveillance aircraft.
Chivers declined to give exact figures on the number of recent pirate
attacks, saying there were varying definitions of what constitutes an
attack. The important point, he said, is that while the number of pirate
attacks has gone up, the pirates' success rate has declined.
In all, Somali pirates were held responsible for 217 acts of piracy in
2009 during which 47 vessels were hijacked and 867 crew members taken
hostage. By the end of 2009, suspected Somali pirates held 12 vessels
for ransom with 263 crew-members of various nationalities as hostages.
Somali gunmen hijacked a Cambodian cargo ship off Berbera after it
unloaded at the port in Somalia's semi-autonomous northern enclave of
Somaliland, a regional maritime official said on Thursday. [nLDE60R130]
STOCK EXCHANGES FOR PIRATES
Deputy U.N. special envoy to Somalia Charles Petrie told a meeting at
the United Nations on piracy in the Horn of Africa that international
naval operations and improved coordination have led to a "decrease in
the rate of successful pirate attacks and have raised the cost of pirate
operations."
"And yet piracy continues to expand further out to sea, at times more
than 1,000 nautical miles from the coast of Somalia," he said.
The spread of hijackings beyond the Gulf of Aden, he added, costs money
and the pirates are coming up with new ways of financing their
activities.
"The rising costs met by ever more innovative financing mechanisms,
including the establishment of stock exchanges which allow local
investors to earn returns on their investment in piracy operations," he
told the so-called Contact Group on piracy off the coast of Somalia.
Nearly 20,000 ships pass through the Gulf of Aden each year, heading to
and from the Suez Canal.
Somalia has had no effective central government since 1991, which is one
of the reasons piracy has flourished. With the aid of African Union
peacekeepers, its U.N.-backed transitional government is struggling to
pacify an Islamist insurgency.
Since the start of 2007, the conflict in Somalia has killed 20,000
civilians and uprooted more than 1.5 million from their homes. The
government is confined to a few small blocks of the capital Mogadishu
and exerts little influence over the state. (Editing by Todd Eastham)
Source: Reuters, January 28, 2010
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