UN Members to Combat Somali Piracy in the Gulf of Aden

"It is sad that the American forces off the coast of Somalia are here for fun and are not combatting the pirates," Abdullahi Said Samatar, security affairs minister in Somalia's semiautonomous Puntland region told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Puntland. Earlier this week, Somali forces successfully stormed a ship that had been taken by pirates, who Samatar is quoted as saying "crossed the line" when they attacked a vessel under hire by Somali businessmen. These same pirates may also be the very first to actually face the death penalty, admits Samatar, in what has been described as a highly corrupt legal system.

For the record, the U.S. Navy reports they have led international patrols to combat piracy along Somalia's 1,880-mile (3,025-kilometer) coast. Somalia has no navy, and their transitional government has struggled to assert control in a region wracked by more than a decade of violence. Abdi Hagi Gobdon, a spokesman for the transitional government, welcomes the French and U.S. to combat piracy and guard Somalia's coastline, which is the longest in Africa.

Gobdon told the AP on Tuesday that the transitional government "is not in position to safeguard the country's waters [...] Therefore, Somalia welcomes and encourages the initiative of the U.S. and France to establish international forces to combat pirates along the Somali coastline."

The United States, France, Britain, and others are currently drafting a U.N. resolution which would allow countries to chase and arrest pirates off the coast of Somalia, responding to the huge rise in pirate attacks and kidnappings, including this week's hijacking of the Spanish tuna boat Playa de Bakio.

"We are working on a text to combat piracy. The time has come to deal with this issue," France's UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert was quoted. "We French and the Americans, with the support of the British and others, want to have a resolution on piracy," Ripert told Reuters in a different interview. "We are in the process of agreeing among ourselves the (details) of the resolution, including the scope and the legal aspects."

Ripert also said that although there were complicated legal issues, it was possible they might have a draft ready in as little as a week or two. "We want to do it fast, but it could take one or two weeks because it has to be by consensus; it's not confrontational," he told the AP. "The idea is to give a mandate, to call on states of the U.N. to tackle piracy by organizing patrols, reacting to acts of piracy, to take as many preventative measures as possible."

Ripert made it clear, the idea is that United Nations member states, not the U.N. itself, would join forces and combat piracy before it happens, with stepped-up monitoring and patrols. "It would not be the U.N. organizing it, but authorizing it, asking for it, giving the mandate to the member states to do that and to do it collectively as much as possible," he said.

Spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, Richard Grenell said, "We think it is a very important issue, we want to move it forward as soon as possible." He added that "with recent events, it is critical that the Security Council looks at this immediately."

Countries in the pirate ridden region are also very concerned about the rise of piracy. Last week, 13 nations from the Gulf of Aden, Western Indian Ocean and Red Sea agreed to a draft proposal that calls for reporting and sharing information on piracy, stopping ships that are involved in piracy, and prosecuting the pirates involved.

Head of security at the U.N.'s International Maritime Organization Chris Trelawny said the solution to Somalia's piracy problem is "not at sea. It is the restoration of law and order in that country."