More jews into Somalia??

Bush to push international action against pirates.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20081210/ap_tr_ge/travel_brief_bush_piracy

By ROBERT BURNS, Associated Press Writer Robert Burns, Associated Press Writer – Wed Dec 10, 3:34 pm ET

AP – Passengers from the MS Columbus cruise ship prepare toboard a bus on arrival in Dubai by chartered flight …

WASHINGTON – In one of its final foreign policy initiatives, the Bush administration plans to push for a broader international accord on how to suppress piracy in waters off Somalia's lawless coast, officials say.
Without committing more U.S. Navy ships, the administration wants to tap into what officials see as a growing enthusiasm in Europe and elsewhere for more effective coordinated action against the Somali pirates. Administration officials view the current effort as lacking coherence, as pirates score more and bigger shipping prizes.
Spearheading the administration's case, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice intends to make a pitch at a United Nations anti-piracy meeting in New York on Tuesday with her counterparts from a number of nations with a stake in solving the problem.
"I expect in the coming weeks we will work within the U.N. to give the international system better policy tools to more effectively address the problem and its root causes," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
That includes pressing for an international peacekeeping force in Somalia to replace an Ethiopian-led force that is to depart soon, he said. The pirates are Somalis based in camps near coastal port villages. The U.S. says they have links to an Islamic extremist group that has taken control of much of the country.
The administration has decided it needs to be more active against piracy, if only because the U.S. Navy is the world's predominant sea power and the United States has a long-standing interest in freedom of navigation. But officials want to avoid appearing to force action on partner nations, especially without committing more U.S. Navy ships.
Fighting piracy was not a prominent topic during the presidential campaign. The Obama transition office's chief spokesperson on national security issues, Brooke Anderson, on Wednesday declined to comment on how the incoming administration would deal with it, indicating that for now it is a matter for President Bush.
Stephen Morrison, an Africa expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview Wednesday that he doubts anti-piracy policy will be a high priority for Obama early in his term. Nor does he foresee a heavy Obama focus, in the early going, on the broader problem of instability in Somalia.
"I don't think there's going to be any stomach for, `Hey, let's really get our arms around Somalia as a first-out-of-the door issue,'" Morrison said. The reluctance is rooted, he said, in the U.S. experience in Somalia in the final days of President George H.W. Bush's administration in 1992, leading in late 1993 to a deadly U.S. military clash in Mogadishu and a humiliating U.S. withdrawal.
Two State Department officials discussed broad outlines of the administration's anti-piracy plan on condition of anonymity. They insisted on anonymity because decisions on some aspects of the plan were still pending.
Elements of the administration's approach include:
• Getting shipping and cruise companies to do more on their own to thwart pirate attacks, not only through navigational tactics but also by making it harder for pirates to board their ships. The administration will not encourage the use of defensive firearms aboard commercial ships but does favor more use of non-lethal technology such as alarm and surveillance systems, anti-boarding devices such as water cannons and electric fences, and long-range acoustic devices that generate painful noise.
"In theory, if mariners heed warnings and regulations and implement prudent anti-piracy measures, this could eliminate the market for Somali pirates, making the practice unprofitable," retired Navy Cmdr. John Patch wrote in the December issue of Proceedings, a publication of the U.S. Naval Institute.
• Maintaining an international naval presence in the region, not primarily to respond to pirates attacks but to deter them, or, in some cases, to provide channels for safe passage through the most dangerous areas.
• Improving the sharing of time-sensitive intelligence about the piracy threat.
• Coordinating an international effort to disrupt the pirates' financial dealings and resources.
• Gaining a firm international consensus on how to deal with legal issues arising from the capture of pirates. In the U.S. view, some countries in the region are reluctant to take on the pirates because they prefer not to deal with the political headache of deciding where and how to prosecute them.
A central reason for the Bush administration's heightened interest is that piracy has gotten worse recently — more attacks against a wider range of targets, including unsuccessful assaults on cruise ships — in the Gulf of Aden, which links the Mediterranean Sea, the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.
Pirates have attacked 32 vessels and hijacked 12 since NATO sent four ships to the region Oct. 24 to escort cargo ships and conduct anti-piracy patrols. Ships still being held for huge ransoms include a Saudi oil tanker with $100 million in crude and a Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and other arms.