Russia Calls for Creation of International Tribunal to Combat Ship Piracy

Russia is pushing for the creation of an international tribunal on piracy to help to ease the pressure on countries including Kenya to prosecute suspects, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. “We have to be more decisive in fighting piracy , and Russian and other militaries are working to intensify the fight,” Lavrov told reporters today in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Kenya started last year to prosecute suspected pirates captured by foreign navies patrolling the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden, after signing accords with the European Union, the U.S., the U.K., Canada, China and Denmark. Government officials from the East African nation have threatened to terminate the agreements unless Kenya receives more financial help.
“We are receiving a lot of these pirates, but these have had the effect of putting a lot of burden on our own courts and also the prisons,” George Saitoti, Kenya’s acting foreign minister, told a press conference with Lavrov today. International support “has not been forthcoming,” he said.
Russia circulated a text adopted by the United Nations Security Council in April, asking UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon to report on options for “a regional tribunal or an international tribunal and corresponding imprisonment arrangements.”
The number of merchant ships hijacked by pirates increased 15 percent in the first nine months of the year to 39 as Somali assailants had more success in snatching vessels, the International Maritime Bureau said on Oct. 18.
British Couple Freed
A British couple, Paul and Rachel Chandler, were freed on Nov. 14 by pirates, ending a year-long ordeal after they were hijacked while sailing their yacht toward Tanzania.
Piracy has flourished off the coast of Somalia, Kenya’s neighbor to the north, which has been mired in civil war and lacked a functioning central administration since the removal of Mohamed Siad Barre, the former dictator, in 1991.
The international community should fight “not only the symptoms of piracy but also the roots,” which are social and economic in nature, Lavrov said.

Source: Bloomberg