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Pirates vow to fight if attacked by US
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-04-10 20:32 MOGADISHU -- Somali pirates holding an American hostage on a drifting lifeboat vowed on Friday to fight any attack by US naval forces stalking them at high sea. "We are not afraid of the Americans," one of the pirates told Reuters by satellite phone on behalf of the gang holding ship captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean.
"We will defend ourselves if attacked." Despite their defiant talk, maritime groups tracking the saga -- the first time Somali pirates have captured an American -- say a more likely outcome is a negotiated solution, possibly involving safe passage in exchange for their captive. Four pirates have been holding Phillips, a former Boston taxi driver, since Wednesday after a foiled bid to hijack the 17,000-tonne Maersk Alabama several hundred miles off Somalia.
"Other pirates want to come and help their friends, but that would be like sentencing themselves to death," said Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme that monitors the region's seas. "They will release the captain, I think, maybe today or tomorrow, but in exchange for something. Maybe some payment or compensation, and definitely free passage back home." Phillips is one of about 270 hostages being held at the moment by Somali pirates, who have been plying the busy sea-lanes of the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean for years. They are keeping 18 captured vessels at or near lairs on the Somali coast -- five of them taken since the weekend alone. Yet the fact Phillips is the first US citizen seized, and the drama of his 20-man American crew stopping the Alabama being hijacked on Wednesday, has galvanized world attention. It has also given President Barack Obama another foreign policy problem in a place most Americans would rather forget. Perched on the Horn of Africa across from the Middle East, Somalia has suffered 18 years of civil conflict since warlords toppled former leader Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Americans remember with a shudder the disastrous US-U.N. intervention there soon after, including the infamous "Black Hawk Down" battle in 1993 when 18 US troops were killed in a 17-hour firefight that later inspired a book and a movie. US Sends More Ships In another Somali-American saga, Captain Phillips apparently volunteered to get in the lifeboat with the pirates on Wednesday to act as a hostage for the sake of the Alabama's 20 American crew members, who somehow retook control of their ship. The freighter, which is carrying food aid for Uganda and Somalia, is now on its way to its original destination, Mombasa port in Kenya. It is expected to arrive by Sunday night. |
