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Somali pirates demand $25m for Saudi tanker

AFP, Mogadishu
Somali pirates who hijacked Saudi oil super-tanker Sirius Star yesterday demanded 25 million dollars in ransom and set a 10-day deadline amid mounting calls for tougher action on sea bandits.
"We are demanding 25 million dollars (20 million euros) from the Saudi owners of the tanker. We do not want long-term discussions to resolve the matter," a pirate who identified himself as Mohamed Said told AFP from the ship, now anchored at the Somali pirate lair of Harardhere.
"The Saudis have 10 days to comply, otherwise we will take action that could be disastrous," Said added, without elaborating.
Seized at the weekend in the Indian Ocean some 500 miles (800 kilometres) off the coast of Kenya, the super-tanker was loaded to capacity with two million barrels of oil and the biggest vessel to be seized by pirates so far.
In a sign of growing international frustration over a situation described by the International Maritime Bureau (IBM) as "out ol control," Russia announced it would send more warships to combat piracy in the waters around Somalia.
Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky, the top commander of the Russian navy', said: "After the Neustrashimy (Fearless), ships from other fleets of the Russian navy will head to the region," referring to a frigate sent to the area in September.
"This is needed because of the situation that has developed in the vicinity of the Hom of Africa aryi the Gulf of Aden, where Somali pirates have sharply increased their activities," he said.
Russia's ambassador to Nato, Dmitry Rogozin, meanwhile called for an international ground military operation in the region to crush piracy.
"It's up to the European Union, Nato and others to launch a coastal land operation to eliminate the pirates," Rogozin told AFP, insisting that "naval action alone will not be enough to liquidate the threat of piracy".
In London, Foreign Secretary David Miliband urged the world to firmly fight the "scourge of hostage taking," saying Britain was "extremely concerned by the situation in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia."
African Union commission chief Jean Ping said the surge in piracy was a result of worsening security in Somalia and called for "a rapid deployment of a United Nations peace force."
Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein warned that piracy will rage unless the world helps restore a functional government in Somalia, which collapsed after the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
The problems of pirates will only be resolved when the international community helps Somalia to stand on her feet," Hussein told reporters in Mogadishu.
The Somali government
signed multi-million dollar deals with French military firm, Secopex in 2008, and US firm Topcat Marine Security Inc. in 2005, to combat piracy off its coast, but of the two firms ever showed up.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal said on Wednesday that the ship's owners are in talks with the pirates, but the company that operates the vessel has remained tight-lipped about the claims of negotiations.
The Indian frigate INS Tabar, one of dozens of warships from several countries protecting commercial shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden, on sank a Somali pirate ship late Tuesday after coming under fire, navy spokesman Nirad Sinha said.
Pirates use mother ships, generally hijacked trawlers or deep-sea dhows, to tow speedboats from which they launch their attacks with grapnel hooks tied to rope ladders before neutralising the crews at gunpoint.
The incident came as shipping groups reported a new surge in hijackings off Somalia, with three captured since the Sirius Star was taken.
Noel Choong. head of the piracy reporting centre at the IMB in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, said the situation is already out of control."