Lucas Barasa And Reuters
14 October 2008
Nairobi — Somali security forces have freed a Panamanian ship from pirates two days after they killed one of the hijackers in a gun battle.
The new development came as Sudan summoned Kenyan and Ethiopian ambassadors in Khartoum to protest what the government perceived as an arms build-up by South Sudan through the two neighbours.
Reports said the Wail was seized by heavily armed Somali gunmen on Thursday as it ferried cement from Oman to Bosasso. There are thought to be nine Syrian and two Somali crew on board.
Were arrested
"We have succeeded in saving the Panama-flagged ship and its crew," Mr Ali Abdi Aware, state minister for the semi-autonomous northern Puntland region, told Reuters."The pirates have surrendered."
Puntland's fisheries minister, Ahmed Said Ow Nur, said 10 hijackers were arrested and two soldiers wounded in the raid.
"The ship is now sailing towards Bosasso," he told Reuters.
In the meantime, a diplomatic row between Kenya and its biggest northern neighbour was brewing on Tuesday after Sudan summoned Kenya's envoy to protest against what it said were illegal shipments of arms to its semi-autonomous South.
Also summoned was Ethiopia's ambassador to Sudan.
Khartoum protested over "violations" linked to an arms shipment seized by pirates off Somalia's coast that Western diplomats said was bound for South Sudan, and a plane-load of weapons from Addis Ababa, state news agency Suna reported.
Suna stopped short of accusing Ethiopia and Kenya of directly supplying arms to South Sudan, which got its own government and right to its own army in a 2005 peace deal with Khartoum that ended a two-decade civil war.
But "against the backdrop" of the two shipments, the foreign ministry asked both envoys to "inform their governments of its protest at these violations".
A senior official of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), speaking on condition of anonymity, denied that the south was buying new equipment from Ethiopia, Kenya or any other country. "We don't have the resources," he told Reuters.
Khartoum's move raised temperatures in a row over the shipment of 33 T-72 tanks and other weapons seized by pirates on the mv Faina last month off Somalia that western diplomats said were secretly heading for South Sudan in possible breach of the peace agreement.
South Sudan has denied ordering the tanks and Kenya has insisted the tanks were meant for its own army.
Sudan's foreign ministry also protested about unspecified weapons that it said had arrived in South Sudan's capital Juba on Friday on an Ethiopian military plane.
Southern officials and army officers on Monday denied the weapons were part of an arms delivery and told Reuters they had been brought in as exhibits in a trade fair.
Sudan's foreign ministry said it was surprised at the shipments as both Kenya and Ethiopia had backed the 2005 peace deal that ended the civil war between the north and south.
There are no global arms embargoes banning South Sudan from buying arms or supplying the SPLA.
East Africa Seafarers Association programme coordinator Andrew Mwangura was first to say the arms were bound for southern Sudan. He was later arrested and charged with publishing a false statement.
Secretly imported
UN documents have since revealed that another 77 tanks and 15 jet fighters were secretly imported by Kenya last year alone.
Interestingly, as Sudan summoned the envoys and protested over the arms shipment, its embassy in Nairobi denied reports that the military hardware was destined for the south of that country.
Sudan Ambassador to Kenya Majok Guandong told a local radio station that the autonomous Southern Sudanese government has the capacity to purchase its own arms directly.
"The Government of Kenya has spoken at the highest level. There is no point for the government of Sudan or the autonomous Southern Sudanese government to buy arms through another country. Why should they?" he asked.
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