The US and France are drafting a UN resolution that would allow countries to chase and arrest pirates off Somalia’s coast, responding to a spate of attacks including this week’s hijacking of a Spanish tuna boat, UN diplomats said.
French Ambassador to the UN Jean-Maurice Ripert said on Monday the resolution would authorize foreign governments to pursue pirate vessels into territorial waters, make arrests and prosecute suspects.
“We want to do it fast, but it could take one or two weeks because it has to be by consensus — it’s not confrontational,” he said.
The push by key UN Security Council members to tackle the issue follows an alarming increase in piracy by well-armed bandits, prompting international demand for protection of shipping lanes.
Meanwhile, Somali regional forces rescued a hijacked cargo vessel yesterday and arrested seven pirates after a clash in the Gulf of Aden, an official said.
Three pirates and a soldier from the semi-autonomous Puntland region were wounded in yesterday’s incident, a day after the Al-Khaleech was hijacked as it sailed from United Arab Emirates to the Puntland port town of Bosasso.
The vessel, contracted by a Somali trader to transport merchandise, was seized on Monday, said Bile Mohamoud Qabowsade, an adviser for the Puntland president.
On Monday, pirates holding 26 crew members on a Spanish fishing boat off the Somali coast demanded ransom for their release, while a Japanese oil tanker was damaged and then chased by pirates off the coasts of Somalia and Yemen. No one was hurt.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
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