/ 20 November 2008

Somali pirates demand $25m for Saudi oil tanker

Somali pirates who hijacked Saudi oil supertanker Sirius Star on Thursday demanded $25-million in ransom and set a 10-day deadline amid mounting calls for tougher action on sea bandits.

”We are demanding $25-million from the Saudi owners of the tanker. We do not want long-term discussions to resolve the matter,” a pirate who identified himself as Mohamed Said told Agence France-Presse from the ship, now anchored at the Somali pirate lair of Harardhere.

”The Saudis have 10 days to comply, otherwise we will take action that could be disastrous,” Said added, without elaborating.

Seized at the weekend in the Indian Ocean about 800km off the coast of Kenya, the supertanker was loaded to capacity with two million barrels of oil and the biggest vessel to be seized by pirates so far.

In a sign of growing international frustration over a situation described by the International Maritime Bureau (IBM) as ”out of control”, Russia announced it would send more warships to combat piracy in the waters around Somalia.

Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky, the top commander of the Russian navy, said: ”After the Neustrashimy, ships from other fleets of the Russian navy will head to the region,” referring to a frigate sent to the area in September.

”This is needed because of the situation that has developed in the vicinity of the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden, where Somali pirates have sharply increased their activities,” he said.

Russia’s ambassador to Nato Dmitry Rogozin, meanwhile, called for an international ground military operation in the region to crush piracy.

”It’s up to the European Union, Nato and others to launch a coastal land operation to eliminate the pirates,” Rogozin said, insisting that ”naval action alone will not be enough to liquidate the threat of piracy”.

In London, Foreign Secretary David Miliband urged the world to firmly fight the ”scourge of hostage-taking”, saying Britain was ”extremely concerned by the situation in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia.”

African Union commission chief Jean Ping said the surge in piracy was a result of worsening security in Somalia and called for ”a rapid deployment of a United Nations peace force”.

Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein warned that piracy will rage unless the world helps restore a functional government in Somalia, which collapsed after the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

”The problems of pirates will only be resolved when the international community helps Somalia to stand on her feet,” Hussein told reporters in Mogadishu.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said on Wednesday that the ship’s owners are in talks with the pirates, but the company that operates the vessel has remained tight-lipped about the claims of negotiations.

The Indian frigate INS Tabar, one of dozens of warships from several countries protecting commercial shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden, sank a Somali pirate ship late on Tuesday after coming under fire, navy spokesperson Nirad Sinha said. — AFP

 

AFP