Bartamaha (BRUSSELS ):— The EU’s top diplomat on Friday called pirate attacks off Somalia “one of the big challenges of our times” ahead of her first visit to Africa, where she will focus on the issue.
“Piracy is one of the big challenges of our times, both for the region and for the international community,” European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement.
“It undermines maritime security in the Indian Ocean and stability and development in the region.”
On the trip beginning Tuesday, her first since taking office, Ashton will travel to Kenya, Tanzania and the Seychelles with the aim of finding legal solutions for prosecuting captured pirates.
The EU has deployed a naval force in the area to fend off pirate attacks, which have threatened one of the world’s busiest maritime shipping corridors.
But Kenya has announced that it wants to stop prosecuting suspected Somali pirates and cancel such agreements it has reached with several naval powers, including the EU.
The country has said that the strain on its over-populated prisons and congested courts was too great.
The EU, which has signed a similar deal with the Seychelles and hopes to agree to one with Tanzania, now has six months to sign a new agreement or find an alternative solution with Kenya.
Ashton will seek to persuade countries in the region to at least accept prosecuting pirates during a transitional period, but she also plans to evoke other possibilities, such as creating an international tribunal, a European diplomat said.
European military instructors also began this month training 700 Somali soldiers in Uganda — part of 2,000 it has committed to train over the course of a year.
Ashton will also meet with the UN special representative for Somalia and key representatives of that country’s transitional government while in Kenya during the trip that will last from May 18-21.
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Source:-AFP

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