Somali Yacht pirates make demands

by Glen Davies on 7 Apr 2008 The French Government says it has made contact with Somali pirates who seized a luxury French megayacht Le Ponant and its 32 crew on Friday.

The 88 metre 850-tonne three-masted megayacht was sailing to Malta in the Mediterranean from the Seychelles when it was seized with its crew of 22 French nationals and 10 Korean and Ukrainians.

The French Government says it has made contact with Somali pirates who seized a luxury French megayacht Le Ponant and its 32 crew on Friday.

The 88 metre 850-tonne three-masted megayacht was sailing to Malta in the Mediterranean from the Seychelles when it was seized with its crew of 22 French nationals and 10 Korean and Ukrainians.

Pirates boarded the vessel in international waters off Somalia. Yesterday she was sighted at Eyl, a small harbor on the Somali Indian Ocean coast, about 500 kilometres north of the Somali capital of Mogadishu, south of the Gulf of Aden.

Local witnesses reported at least ten heavily-armed men using a small boat to ferry provisions from Eyl to the yacht.

French Defence Minister Herve Morin earlier said a military operation to free the crew would only be attempted if their safety could be guaranteed.

The French company that owns the vessel, Compagnie des Iles du Ponant a subsidiary of the giant transport company CMA-CGM, said on Sunday that its crew were thought to be unharmed.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says everything would be done to avoid bloodshed and did not rule out paying a ransom to free the crew.

'We've made contact and the matter could last a long time,' Mr Kouchner told France Inter radio.

The French coastal frigate, Le Commandant Bouan, began tracking the megayacht on Friday and a French military plane based in Djibouti has overflown the vessel.

At least 25 ships have been seized by pirates off Somalia' in the last 12 months. Last August, the Danish government paid a ransom to secure the release after 8 weeks of the crew of a Danish cargo ship kidnapped by pirates.

The U.S. navy has led international patrols to try to combat piracy in the region and the guided missile destroyer USS Porter opened fire to destroy pirate vessels attacking a Japanese tanker.

Somalia does not have its own navy, its armed forces are poorly paid and the transitional government formed in 2004 with UN help has struggled to assert control.

Two UN contractors currently are being held hostage in the south, and several aid workers and a French journalist have been seized in the past few months. Iti s alleged that two police officers were killed and another was wounded late Saturday during the attempted kidnapping of a German aid worker.