Aden Mukalla Houdieda to be New Pirate Centres

by Yemen News Agency on 17 Sep 2008 Yemen will host the second regional meeting on combating piracy which to be held on 27-30 October in participation of representatives of 20 countries with a view to setting up piracy centres in Aden, Mukalla and Houdieda.

Diplomatic sources said that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Djibouti, Jordan, Somalia, Comoros, France, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Madagascar, Maldives, The Seychelle Islands, South Africa, Tanzania, Eritrea, Mozambique and Yemen would sign a memorandum of understanding to combat piracy.

The Gulf of Aden has witnessed an increasing piracy in the past few months which posed dangers against the international navigation movement in the region, according to official reports.

An official source in Transportation Ministry said to the state-run 26sep.net that Yemen had decided to set up three centres for monitoring the international waters in the Gulf of Aden as part of efforts to fight piracy and human trafficking in the Horn of Africa.

'The centres would be established in the port cities of Aden and Mukalla on the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea port of Houdieda', added the source.

Since July, 12 ships have been hijacked in the narrow waterway separating Yemen and Somalia by heavily-armed pirates operating high-powered speedboats, according to the International Maritime Bureau. Eleven are still being held for ransom.

Two rockets were fired at a French tuna fishing boat some 700 kilometres (435 miles) off the Somali coast on Saturday, in a sign the pirates are moving further out to sea to evade military patrols in coastal shipping areas.

Maritime experts say many attacks go unreported along Somalia's 3,700 kilometres of largely unpatrolled coastline.

The UN Security Council in June adopted a resolution authorising foreign warships to enter Somalia's territorial waters with the government's consent to combat pirates, though it has yet to be implemented.