United Nations agencies appeal for action on piracy off Somali coast

Mugadishu, Wednesday, July 11, 2007 Simba Radio

Two United Nations agencies have made a joint appeal for more effective action to enforce order off Somalia 's coast after the World Food Programme lost half its capacity to ship aid to the country because of pirate attacks.

At a press conference in London , Efthimios Mitropoulos, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organisation, and Josette Sheeran, executive director of the WFP, called on Somalia 's provisional federal government to allow foreign warships into its waters to combat the threat.

He said warships from an international force patrolling international waters were forced to watch pirate attacks on aid ships and others because they were not allowed to take action in Somalia 's territorial waters.

The call comes as Somalia prepares for the start on Sunday of a twice-postponed reconciliation conference to bring together the fractious clans and political rivals of the country, racked by civil war and disorder since 1991.

There were seven successful pirate attacks and another nine unsuccessful attempts on vessels off the Somali coast in the first six months of this year, against five successful attacks and 10 attempts for the whole of 2006.

The pirates appear to have changed tactics and are now operating mainly in Somali waters, out of reach of the international forces.

Two of the vessels attacked this year have been contracted to the WFP to supply food aid, with a security guard killed as he tried to resist one attack. In both cases the pirates had held the ships to ransom, with one still being held.

Ms Sheeran said that after the fatal attack the WFP was briefly unable to find any vessel willing to supply food aid to Somalia . The number of vessels willing to sail to Somalia is still half what it was before the attack.

The problems had seriously hit the WFP's ability to bring food aid to Somalia at a reasonable price, Ms Sheeran said. There were alternatives but none was as cheap and there had recently been serious hold-ups to trucks at the border with Kenya .

“Our financial capacity has really been hit here,” Ms Sheeran said. “We can ship in less for the same money.”

The UN Security Council has already discussed the issue, which Mr Mitropoulos said threatened not only aid vessels but also vessels more than 200 nautical miles off Somalia 's coast on intercontinental voyages.

The IMO would ask it to discuss the subject again and consider tougher action, particularly if the Somali government did not “see sense” over the issue of international naval patrols.