'Scourge of piracy must be eradicated'

Bosasso, Somalia: A Saudi supertanker hijacked by pirates with a $100 million oil cargo is anchoring off Somalia near the town of Haradheere, the US Navy said on Tuesday.

"We can confirm the ship is anchoring off the Somali coast at Haradheere," said Lt Nathan Christensen, spokesman for the US Fifth Fleet.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister Prince Saud Al Faisal called the hijacking of a Saudi oil supertanker by Somali pirates "an outrageous act".

"Piracy is against everybody. Like terrorism, it is a disease that has to be eradicated," he said after meeting Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis.

The owner of the hijacked Saudi oil supertanker said the 25 crew members are safe and the ship is fully loaded with crude - a cargo worth about $100 million at current prices.

"The world has never seen anything like this ... The Somali pirates have hit the jackpot," Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the East African Seafarers' Association said.

Dubai-based Vela International Marine Ltd., a subsidiary of Saudi oil company Aramco, said in a statement on Monday that company response teams have been set up and are working to ensure the release of the crew and the vessel.

The US Navy's 5th Fleet said on Tuesday it was monitoring the situation but didn't expect to send warships to surround the vessel as it has done with a Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and other weaponry the was seized off the Somali coast on September 25 and remains in pirate hands.

"I don't anticipate any US ships on station," said Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the 5th Fleet, speaking from its headquarters in Bahrain.

He would not elaborate on how the Navy was watching the hijacked tanker.

"We remain deeply concerned because this attack represents a fundamental change in pirates' ability to hijack bigger vessels farther out at sea," Christensen said.

Nato also has no immediate plans to intercept the Saudi alliance spokesman James Appathurai said yesterday. The Sirius Star is the largest ship ever taken by Somali pirates, though large chemical tankers and freighters have also been hijacked.

Arab meeting

It is "the largest pirated vessel in the region" to date, Christensen said. At 1,080 feet (329 metres), it is the length of an aircraft carrier and can carry about 2 million barrels of oil.

"We are very concerned that a (ship) of this size has been hijacked. We have safety concerns, security concerns, environmental concerns," said Noel Choong, the head of the International Maritime Bureau's regional piracy center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The remote coastal village of Eyl, in the semi-autonomous province of Puntland, is a base for pirates who have been attacking ships in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.

A senior Yemeni diplomat says top Arab officials plan a meeting in Cairo this week to try to forge a strategy to fight piracy in the Horn of Africa.

Yemeni Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Al Ayashi says officials from Djibouti, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan will take part in the one-day meeting on Thursday.

Somalia: 'Rule of law needed'

Analysts say as long as there is no rule of law in Somalia, pirates will flourish - ensuring different interest groups on land get a share of the spoils - and attempts to prevent the pirates militarily will flounder.

In the latest twist to incessant civil war since 1991, Islamist insurgents have taken control of most of south Somalia and are within a few miles of Mogadishu, where the weak, Western-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) is based. "International policy needs to have a pretty open mind as to what kind of government we might have in Somalia. Clearly the experiment of the TFG hasn't delivered development and peace as hoped," Middleton said.

Analysts say it is time to recognise that Somalia's transition government is unable to govern effectively and cannot be expected to curb piracy, which is a profitable, relatively risk-free business for the many unemployed men in the country.

"Maritime security operations in that area are really only a sticking plaster, they are addressing the symptoms not the causes," said Jason Alderwick, a maritime defence analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"The TFG at the moment isn't delivering on its state obligations to maintain the integrity of its own territorial waters. So they need a plan to facilitate that - or come up with another option."

- Reuters