Egypt holds anti-piracy talks

Worried that piracy could scare ships away from the Suez Canal, Egypt yesterday held emergency talks with nations bordering the Red Sea on how stop brazen Somali gunmen from hijacking oil tankers and other vessels.

The Cairo meeting was called amid concerns that lawlessness was disrupting sea lanes and creating panic that might force shipping companies to avoid sailing the Red Sea region. Such a scenario would hurt the Egyptian economy, which relies on more than $5 billion a year in fees collected from vessels passing through the Suez Canal.

The scourge of pirates comes as the Middle East is increasingly sensitive to the global financial crisis, which has pushed oil below $50 a barrel and is depressing markets and affecting trade, real estate and other businesses. Fewer freighters coming through the region would further strain countries linked to transportation and oil and could spark social and political unrest.

Diplomats from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan and Jordan balanced their concerns over chaos on the seas with assurances to respect the sovereignty of the troubled government of Somalia, a country in the Horn of Africa scarred by civil war.

A statement released after yesterday's meeting did not suggest the delegates had come up with any immediate solutions. It said the diplomats "expressed the anxiety of Arab states overlooking the Red Sea toward the growth of the phenomenon of piracy. . . . Piracy off the Somali coast is one of the consequences of the deterioration of the political, security and humanitarian situation in Somalia."

Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki was quoted by the state news agency as saying: "All options are open." He added that Egypt's national security agencies will decide "whether a diplomatic and political solution would be preferred."

Zipping around in swift rubber boats and brandishing automatic weapons, Somali pirates have seized at least 80 ships off the Horn of Africa this year. The tactics have made perilous the shipping routes in the Gulf of Aden off Yemen that lead to the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and finally the Mediterranean. In October, Egypt collected $467.5 million in shipping fees from the canal.

If these fees are jeopardized, "Egyptian prestige will also be undermined because a failure to protect such a strategic resource would prove that Egypt has a very limited regional and military leverage," said Salam. "If we fail to counter this piracy and companies realize that countries along the Red Sea cannot protect the waterways, the impact will be tremendous."