Kenya said on Wednesday it will send its navy to help break a two-week-old stand-off with Somali pirates holding an arms shipment, as the United Nations adopted a resolution urging tougher action against piracy.
Kenya also shrugged off lingering speculation on the identity of the final recipient of the cargo of tanks, surface-to-air systems and other weapons that pirates seized on a Ukrainian ship on September 25.
”Our Kenyan navy will be joining forces with other security forces that are already at sea,” Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula told reporters after a meeting with his Somalia counterpart, Ali Jama Jangeli.
He said Kenya was invoking UN Security Council resolution 1816, which authorises powers cooperating with the transitional government of Somalia to use ”all necessary means” to repress acts of piracy.
Wetangula did not provide further details, but the hijacked cargo is moored off the port of Hobyo, north of Mogadishu, and encircled by several foreign warships, including United States vessels.
The pirates have been demanding $20-million to release the ship and its 21 crew, although sources close to the hijackers say the amount may have been reduced after several days of talks.
Kenya, however, refused to enter the negotiations, which are believed to involve the pirates and the ship owners, and advocated muscle over diplomacy in a bid not to encourage long-term piracy.
”We are not going to engage in talks with these international criminals because it will promote the culture of impunity, and that’s why we oppose ransom payment. They should not be paid ransom at all,” Wetangula said.
A spokesperson for the pirates said from the ship on Tuesday that he hoped a deal would be reached on the amount of the ransom and its mode of payment by Wednesday.
In New York, the UN’s Security Council unanimously approved another resolution late on Tuesday urging states to deploy more air and naval forces to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia.
UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert of France, which co-drafted the text, said the resolution ”states very clearly that you can use force against the pirates”.
At least 32 foreign ships have been attacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden this year, more than twice the figure for 2007, according to the International Maritime Bureau.
About 30% of the world’s oil transits through the Gulf of Aden, and piracy is threatening to divert maritime trade from the Suez Canal to longer and more costly routes.
Meanwhile, the controversy simmered on in Kenya over the intended end-user of the MV Faina‘s shipment of military hardware. Many industry experts and intelligence sources have suggested the arms were bound for South Sudan.
The BBC on Tuesday carried on its website a scanned document it said was the freight manifest of the hijacked ship, pointing that the contract number carried the acronym commonly used for the government of South Sudan (GOSS).
But the Kenyan government on Wednesday argued that the document, although authentic, had been misinterpreted.
”This is our cargo, it is purely Kenyan. The initials shown as GOSS are misinterpreted to mean government of South Sudan,” Wetangula said.
The government spokesperson later issued a statement explaining that GOSS stood for General Ordinance and Security Supplies and was an abbreviation that has been used for 23 years by the Kenyan defence.
Ukrainian state-owned arms exporter Ukrspetsexport also denied the BBC’s theory, giving the same explanation. — AFP
