E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Somalia official calls for assistance to tackle piracy
International navies will fail in their bid to eradicate Somali piracy if they do not commit more towards assisting the local authorities on the ground, the northern region of Puntland said Tuesday.

Puntland security minister Abdullahi Said Samatar, whose breakaway region is the main hub for piracy in the Gulf of Aden, made his appeal for help after pirates seized five foreign ships in 48 hours. "We can see that international allied forces operating off Somalia are not succeeding in their crackdown on the pirates, who despite their increased presence are still hijacking as many ships as they used to," he told AFP.
He's got a point, but why do I think he's just shaking us down for 'international aid' ...
Between Saturday and Monday, Somali pirates hijacked a British-owned cargo, a German container carrier, a Taiwanese tuna fishing vessel, a Yemeni tugboat and a small French yacht with a three-year-old boy on board. Close to 150 attacks by Somali pirates on foreign ships were reported in 2008, most of them in the Gulf of Aden, where 16,000 ships bottle-neck into the Red Sea each year on one of the world's busiest maritime trade routes. The European Union's months-old Atalanta anti-piracy naval mission is estimated to cost more than 300 million dollars annually.
Posted by: Fred 2009-04-08
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=267097