Today's pirates "not just unskilled bandits"

LONDON — The Saudis chose to negotiate. The Indian navy opened fire. The U.S. Navy said shipping companies should do more to protect their vessels, and the ship owners said governments should guard the high seas.

But everyone wants the barely functioning government of Somalia to control the pirates who sail from its ports to seize the cargo ships and tankers that go past.

Mightily armed, but baffled, 21st-century civilization appears to have no collective answer to piracy, a scourge once thought banished into history.

"These are not just unskilled bandits," said Russian navy spokesman Igor Dyagalo. "Most likely we are dealing with two or even three pirate syndicates planning these attacks. They have very good sea communications, and they're well-armed."

The U.N., African Union and Arab nations struggled Thursday to respond to the surge of attacks, authorizing sanctions and calling for international peacekeepers to address the chaos in Somalia that has spawned an upsurge in sea banditry.

The economic reverberations of the attacks widened as the world's largest container-shipping company said it would began sending some slower vessels thousands of miles around southern Africa to avoid the perilous waters on the shorter Suez Canal route.

Insurance underwriters and brokers said the increased danger off the east coast of Africa was driving up premiums for shipping operators, with some costs rising as much as tenfold. BGN Risk, a British firm that analyzes corporate risk, said the additional costs to the shipping industry could total $400 million per year.

The African Union urged the United Nations to quickly send peacekeepers to Somalia but that appeared unlikely anytime soon. A U.N. peacekeeping operation in the early 1990s saw the downing of two U.S. Army helicopters and killing of 18 American soldiers. The U.S. withdrew and U.N. peacekeepers were gone by 1995.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to authorize its sanctions committee to recommend people and entities who would be subject to an asset freeze and travel ban, measures that may be aimed at local officials suspected of aiding the pirates. But it was unclear how that could affect the pirates, who live off cash ransoms dropped in burlap sacks from helicopters or in waterproof suitcases loaded onto skiffs.

Frightened about a drop in revenue from ship traffic through the Suez Canal, Egypt hosted a meeting of seven Arab nations including Saudi Arabia, which saw pirates seize a supertanker loaded with $100 million worth of crude oil in the Indian Ocean on Saturday.

The meeting ended with the group recommending the establishment of panels that would meet in Yemen early next year to develop concrete steps to combat piracy.

Ukrainian ship still held

Efthimios Mitropoulos, secretary general of the International Maritime Organization, said 120 attacks have been reported off the coast of Somalia, with more than 35 ships seized and more than 600 crew members kidnapped and held for ransom. Two seafarers have died and 14 ships and some 280 seafarers are being held, including a Ukrainian ship loaded with weapons and the Saudi Arabian supertanker.

The Copenhagen-based A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S said it was telling ships "without adequate speed," mainly tankers, to sail the long route around Africa unless they can join convoys with naval escorts in the gulf, group exec Soeren Skou said.

The company didn't say how many ships would be affected, but it said it usually has eight tanker transits in the area per month. The company says it handles 16 percent of the world's container-shipping traffic.

On Wednesday, Norwegian shipping group Odfjell ordered its more than 90 tankers to avoid the Gulf of Aden.

The Gulf of Aden, off Somalia, connects to the Red Sea, which, in turn, is linked to the Mediterranean by the Suez Canal. The route is thousands of miles and many days shorter than going around Africa's Cape of Good Hope.

Experts say the much longer journey adds 12 to 15 days to a tanker's trip, at a cost of between $20,000-$30,000 a day.

Calls to Blackwater

Many international shippers insist it is not their role to fight pirates.

Vladimir Mednikov, vice president of Sovcomflot, Russia's largest shipping company, said governments and the international community should secure the open seas.

"We are peaceful people. We are not in the business of war," Mednikov said.

Cyrus Mody, manager of the International Maritime Bureau in London, said his group would like to see more naval stops of so-called "mother vessels," base ships used by pirates as jumping-off points, which should then be confiscated.

But Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said some of the blame must fall on the shippers themselves, who have not done enough to protect their cargo.

Military officials argue that the problem also must be addressed ashore in Somalia, where the pirates are organizing unmolested. Until then, private security companies are likely to ramp up their efforts to fill in the gaps.

Jeff Gibson, vice president for international training and operations at Blackwater Worldwide, said he has had inquiries from about 60 shippers and insurance companies. "The pirates are going after soft targets," Gibson said.

"If a ship is being escorted by another boat, or some small boats, or maybe even a helicopter overhead, (the pirates) are going to decide: Let's not make the effort."

Such practices run up against U.N. guidelines for operating commercial ships, however, and critics argue that armed guards on board — which are not always visible to attacking pirates — may lead to needless bloodshed without deterring potential attackers.