• Fears grow that fleets will be forced to avoid area
• Islamist group says it is hunting hijackers
Xan Rice in Nairobi and David Gow in Brussels The Guardian,
Saturday 22 November 2008 Article history
(Abdul Hassan, chief of the pirate group called the 'Central Regional Coastguard', carries a rocket-propelled grenade on to a boat with some of his crew. Photograph: Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images)
European shipowners are urging their governments to wage war on Somali pirates and seize vessels by force, the Guardian has learned, amid growing fear that shippers will otherwise avoid the seas off the Horn of Africa altogether - at huge cost to global trade.
A day after the world's biggest shipping company, AP Moller-Maersk, said it would divert some of its fleet from the Suez canal and take the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope, the industry urged stronger action against pirates. Last night, the BBC reported the UN had given the green light to warships to go after vessels.
Alfons Guinier, secretary general of the European Community Shipowners Association, said other companies were thinking of following Maersk's example. But he said that his association, which claims to speak for 41% of the world's merchant fleet, wanted EU governments to go further after the hijacking a week ago of the Saudi supertanker Sirius Star more than 400 miles off the Somalian coast.
"We know there will be more military forces in the area, but let's hope they will go after the pirates and stop this escalation," he said. "We're asking not just for more escorts but for repressive action." The demand comes after the International Maritime Organisation asked the UN security council to sanction dispatch of as many warships and aircraft as possible to "disrupt" pirate operations, secure shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden, and escort vessels, including those bringing food relief to war-torn Somalia.
The pirate gangs have operated with near impunity for years, but may now also face a confrontation on land.
Yesterday, rebels from the al-Shabaab Islamist movement entered Harardheere, a pirate base halfway up Somalia's east coast. An elder in the port said: "The Islamists arrived searching for the pirates and the Saudi ship. The Islamists say they will attack the pirates for hijacking a Muslim ship."
Some residents said the fighters wanted a cut of the ransom, but a spokesman for al-Shabaab claimed they were hunting the pirates for the "bigger crime" of hijacking a ship belonging to a Muslim country.
Sheikh Abdirahim Isse Adow said: "Haradheere is under our control, and we shall do something about that ship."
Pirates yesterday released a Greek chemical tanker held since September. The East African Seafarers' Association said the Liberian-flagged MV Genious and 19 crew were released after its owner paid a ransom.
But Somali pirates still hold at least 15 other vessels and more than 250 crew members. Kenya's foreign minister, Moses Wetangula, claimed yesterday that the pirates had netted $150m (£101m) in ransoms this year, though maritime experts say the figure is closer to $30m. Iran's biggest shipping firm confirmed that it had also received a ransom demand for a Hong-Kong-registered ship carrying 36,000 tonnes of wheat that was captured on Tuesday. The British foreign secretary, David Miliband, has called on shipowners to refuse to negotiate.
The European shipowners' demand will be made on Monday in talks in with the EU naval coordination cell set up by foreign ministers in September. It is creating an enforcement unit, under Operation Atalanta, based in RAF Northwood outside London. It is due to be fully operational in early December and be headed by a British rear admiral.
Guinier said the EU should coordinate its military efforts with other navies from Nato, Russia, Japan, Canada and India, which is sending four warships to the region. An Indian warship destroyed a pirate "mothership" this week.
The IMO's secretary-general, Efthimios Mitropoulos, meanwhile, told the UN that, with more than 12% of global oil transport passing through the Gulf of Aden, widespread diversions via South Africa would bring "a series of negative repercussions". "Such diversions would almost double the length of a typical voyage from the Gulf to Europe, thereby increasing fuel consumption, emissions and transport costs which would have to be passed on eventually to consumers everywhere," he said in a statement.
Peter Beck-Bang, a Maersk spokesman in Copenhagen, said that the diversion of its ships would add eight days to a voyage to the US and 14 days to one to Europe. If the situation remained unchanged, this would cost the firm "two-digit millions of dollars" in 2009. The diversion covers eight tankers and three container ships.
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