MEPs say EU anti-pirate mission is 'military nonsense'

15.10.2008 @ 15:02 CET

The EU naval mission to be deployed against pirates off the coasts of Somalia is a "military nonsense," "morally wrong" and has "no international legal basis," several MEPs said at a hearing in Brussels on Wednesday (15 November), as delegates from the EU council and the bloc's military co-ordination cell defended the project.

If approved by member states in November, the EU's first naval mission will consist of five or six ships from different EU countries under the command of UK vice-admiral Philip Jones and with headquarters in Northwood, Great Britain, Mrs Claude-France Arnould from the EU council - the secretariat of EU top diplomat Javier Solana - told MEPs.

Russia is also in "military talks" to offer help, but with no political decision reached yet, captain Andres Breijo Claur, the head of the EU's "NAVCO" co-ordination cell, said. NAVCO was set up in order to co-ordinate the different existing naval forces in the waters off the Somali coast, including NATO and US led counter-terrorism task forces.

Since January this year, heavily armed pirates operating in the region where Somalia's northeastern tip meets the Indian Ocean have carried out 71 attacks on ships and still hold 11 ships for ransom. The maritime route is of strategic importance not only to food aid for African countries, but also because it leads to the Suez Canal through which an estimated 30 percent of the world's oil transits.

NATO members at an informal meeting last week in Budapest agreed to despatch immediately a joint fleet of NATO ships to escort UN vessels delivering food in the area.

Under fire from several MEPs who said the EU is needlessly duplicating NATO efforts, the council's Mrs Arnould said NATO has not actually deployed any ships yet, with individual efforts from countries like Canada, Denmark and the Netherlands now and then escorting UN ships for the time being.

Calling the planned EU mission "military nonsense" and a "desperate attempt" by the French EU presidency "to run up the EU flag on another military operation during its time in office," British Conservative MEP Geoffrey van Orden said.

"It is a pity that the British government has agreed to an EU naval operation at the same time that NATO will be engaged in the same waters. Not only does this introduce unnecessary complexity and political confusion but it stretches our meagre naval assets even further. Bear in mind that in the last 10 years the destroyer and frigate fleet of the Royal Navy has been reduced from 35 to 25," he told EUobserver.

Greek MEP Giorgos Dimitrakopoulos from the EPP-ED group criticized the set up of a "global armada," while German green MEP Angelika Beer underlined the lack of international law to sustain the proposed European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) mission.

"There is no clarity to the limitations of this mandate. Will the EU be able to sink ships and arrest pirates?" she asked.

Portuguese socialist MEP Ana Maria Gomes gave a fiery speech on the "moral problem" of the EU mission, which, in her opinion, is only about "protecting oil tankers."

"Nobody gives a damn about the people in Somalia who die like flies," she said.

16.10.2008

WHO TELLS THE TRUTH DO YOU THINK?

French military helicopters on Friday fired rockets at pirates who had released hostages they had been holding on a captured luxury yacht off the coast of Somalia, witnesses said. French officials confirmed that troops had fired on a vehicle with pirates on board, but they said they had not shot at people, had not fired any missiles and had not killed anyone.Local witnesses said an unknown number of people were killed by the rocket fire, which also destroyed three vehicles."I could see clouds of smoke as six helicopters were bombing the pirates. The pirates were also firing anti-aircraft machine guns in reaction. I cannot tell the exact casualties," witness Mohamed Ibrahim told Reuters by radio telephone.

The district commissioner of Garaad, where the attack took place, said the helicopters landed and troops jumped out to grab members of a group of 14 pirates who had just come ashore where three pickup trucks with heavy weapons were waiting."Local residents came out to the see the helicopters on the ground. The helicopters took off and fired rockets on the vehicles and the residents there, killing five local people," Commissioner Abdiaziz Olu-Yusuf Mohamed told Reuters by phone.

In Paris, French officials said that the operation was conducted with minimal use of force for fear of causing collateral damage.They said a Gazelle helicopter with a sniper on board and a Panther helicopter with three commandos on board were involved in the incident. In addition two more missile-armed Gazelle helicopters stood by in support but did not intervene.They said the only shot fired was by the sniper to disable the engine of a vehicle containing the pirates."No shots were fired directly at the pirates," Jean-Louis Georgelin, chief of the armed forces general staff, told a news conference."The shot from the first Gazelle was enough to stop the vehicle and get out the pirates, who gave themselves up without too much difficulty," he said.

Piracy is a very lucrative business off Somalia's coast, and most kidnappers are said to treat their hostages well, in anticipation of a well paid ransom. The police found the Somali pirates' manual of conduct on board the Le Ponant. The manual banned mistreatment of hostages, notably sexual abuse.
The ransom for the hostages of Le Ponant was reportedly set at around $2 million (US). The ransom money was handed over to the pirates, and the crew released and taken aboard a French navy ship. The crew then flew on to Paris, where they arrived Monday.

Soon after the ransom money was handed over, French special forces captured the men now being questioned in Paris, while they fleed by car into the Somali desert. It appears as though these 6 men were just part of a larger group of pirates that carried out the hostage-taking, evident in the fact that they only had about $200,000 on them when captured. In other words, it looks as though some of the pirates may have gotten away with most of the ransom. The governor of the Mugug region of Somalia (where the raid was carried out) said Thursday that four of the men kept in Paris are innocent. Simply khat traders selling their goods to the two pirates.

In 2007, 236 acts of maritime piracy were recorded, over 30 of them off the Somali coast.

On April 19th, 2008 YachtPals says:

Prime Minister M. Francois Fillon of France gives his response to a question in the national assembly a few days ago:

"I should like to point out that it's the first time in a very long while since a military operation has been carried out against an act of maritime piracy and, what's more, done so successfully.

In 2007, 236 acts of maritime piracy were recorded, over 30 of them off the Somali coast. This situation can't go on. France wants international law to be respected. This is why we have taken the initiative of proposing that the Security Council take two decisions. First of all, in cases of flagrante delicto, on the possibility of an automatic right of hot pursuit for naval vessels which have received the requisite agreement of the Security Council. And secondly, on the development of maritime patrols in dangerous areas in order to deter piracy. This is in fact what France did successfully to protect the World Food Programme ships for several months, during which these ships, which used to be regularly attacked by pirates, weren't hijacked. They are currently protected by the Dutch Navy."

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President Abdullah Yusuf Ahmed, who was in Paris to meet with President Nicolas Sarkozy and other top French officials, would not confirm a the report that four of the pirates were members of his extended family or clan. He did say that even if they turned out to be relatives, "they must pay" for their crimes.

"If they are from my family, or if they are from another family, I am for justice," Ahmed told the press after meeting with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.