The Secretary General of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Efthimios Mitropoulos said international terrorist organizations are behind the piracy off the coasts of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden. Addressing a symposium on sea piracy and ways of facing it, organized by the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport yesterday, Mitropoulos said this can be deduced by analyzing the reports received by the International Maritime Organization on piracy incidents in Somalia. He said pirates' attacks have turned from simple acts by gangs seeking to get tools or equipment from ships to the hijacking of entire vessels.
This confirms that global terrorist organizations plan these incidents very well, as pirates have state-of-the-art weapons and are trained on some tactics to quickly kidnap vessels. They also have modern equipment for monitoring and tracking vessels and speedboats.
The reports received by the organization say that pirates hijack any ship in no more than 15 minutes, Mitropoulos said. The phenomenon of piracy appears in countries having weak governments and unsettled conditions, especially in Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, he said, adding that the IMO should play a role to combat this phenomenon. He pointed to the development in the techniques used by the pirates to carry out their attacks on ships.
He said the IMO was keen to deeply study the phenomenon and provide advice on how to face piracy, adding that there is an urgent need to pass national laws to support what the IMO is doing to tackle this phenomenon.
Mitropoulos has stressed the importance of the annual statistics and reports on piracy submitted to the IMO by various countries, especially in the China Sea and the Gulf of Aden. There were some 771 acts of piracy in 2000, 112 of which in the Straits of Malacca, South-East Asia and the South China Sea, he said.
However, the IMO has recently noticed increasing number of acts of piracy in Africa and some other hot spots, he added.
He then said that such kind of acts are carried out in Africa almost every day and that they were 135 in 2008.
600 sailors have been recently detained or killed by pirates, he said, pointing to the impact of the phenomenon on the Suez Canal and the important navigation lines worldwide. After some world countries sent military and naval units to the Somali coasts, acts of piracy have considerably decreased in the areas where there are naval patrols, Mitropoulos said, stressing the importance of coordination between the countries participating in these arrangements. The international community is stepping up international efforts to combat the phenomenon. Ship owners should provide ships with all the equipment needed to combat piracy, such as early warning and early detection systems so as to detect any incidents at the appropriate time. There is also a need for training seafarers on how to face piracy, he said.
He stressed the importance of eliminating the main causes of Somali piracy, especially the need for a central government able to control the state's coasts and territorial waters.
For his part, Egypt's Minister of Transport Mohamed Lotfi Mansour said Egypt is concerned with piracy in light of the international community's interest in developing effective frameworks to face this phenomenon. The increase in piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the entrance to the Red Sea has negative impacts on the Egyptian income and the national security, he said.
The Director of the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport Mohamed Farghali said that the academy, as emphasized by the seminar, pays much attention to the seriousness of the piracy, which is now threatening the maritime transport industry.
He called on the international community to take effective action to address that phenomenon, protect vessels and ensure the safety of international sea lines especially across the Gulf of Aden, as more than 12% of the world oil production passes through this region.
