DUBAI — The world is losing the battle against piracy, the Somali transitional government’s foreign minister warned on Monday in Dubai as he and other officials emphasised that the solution to piracy lies on land.

“The race between the pirates and the world is being won by the pirates,” Mohammed Abdulahi Omar Asharq told a counter-piracy conference in Dubai.

“Consequently the status quo view that manages acts of piracy is no longer a viable strategy. It is equally clear that piracy can only be uprooted on land, where it grows and persists,” Asharq said, appealing for international aid.

“The world has so far only responded with containment. This is not productive, or effective, or practical, or morally defensible,” he said.

“The international community must make the urgent and necessary investment in the Somali security forces to build up the capability of the state and to establish its national authority.

“Without this twin strategy of military authority and political reform and reconciliation,” which Asharq said the transitional government is also pursuing, “we cannot end the consequences of the civil war in Somalia.”

“And unless we do so, we will not resolve the causes of piracy.”

Augustine Mahiga, the UN secretary general’s special representative for Somalia, also emphasised that the solution to Somali piracy must be on land.

“Piracy is one of the consequences of a prolonged, two-decade political crisis in Somalia,” Mahiga said.

“The approach to it must first and foremost be political. It has been underscored this afternoon that there cannot be a military solution,” he said.

“When we address root causes in Somalia, we don’t have to wait for peace to come full-fledged,” he said, noting that “we can begin to address some key areas of development in areas of relative stability such as Puntland and Somaliland.”

United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan said that “any actions taken in the field of countering piracy would not be effective unless essential changes in security and stability on land in Somalia are made.”

And Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the chairman of giant ports operator DP World, which co-sponsored the conference with the UAE foreign ministry, also said that a prosperous and peaceful Somalia is the long-term solution to the problem of pirates based there.

“The current international focus is in finding near-term, offshore solutions for the piracy menace,” Sulayem said. But “it is increasingly clear that the community of nations needs to be thinking also long-term, and on shore.

“This is because stable, prosperous economies are the only effective, enduring solution to piracy, which feeds on the lack of opportunity to make honest money, the lack of structure, the lack of security, and the lack of hope for a stable future,” he added.

While the solution is ultimately a stable Somalia, there remain serious challenges to establishing peace in a country that has been torn by decades of civil war, since the 1991 overthrow of president Mohamed Siad Barre.

Fighting continues in Somalia, with the fundamentalist Shebab insurgent movement controlling large swathes of the country, though it has lost ground in recent weeks to an offensive by African Union and pro-government forces.

Mahiga also noted that a lack of dialogue between various Somali political actors, and bickering among political leadership, remains problematic.

International naval forces including those from the United States, NATO, the European Union and a number of other countries have since 2008 been tasked with hunting the pirates, but have clearly not ended the problem.

The two-day conference in Dubai opened just days after maritime watchdog the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said that worldwide pirate attacks in the first three months of 2011, driven by Somali pirates, were the highest ever at 142.

Piracy has made shipping increasingly perilous off the Horn of Africa, and its costs have been extensive.

Ron Widdows, the president of Neptune Orient Lines and chairman of the World Shipping Council, estimated the yearly cost of piracy to the shipping industry at “3.5 to maybe upwards of eight billion dollars.”

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AFP

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