Nations pledge funds toward Somali piracy fight

UNITED NATIONS — An informal band of nations and organizations fighting piracy off the coast of Somalia have agreed to set up two new international funds to help pay the cost of prosecutions and beefed-up security.
Japan is contributing $14 million to create "regional centers" in Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia and other places for information-sharing and pooling of other pirate-fighting resources.
The hope is that other countries, too, will add money to the new donor fund set up through the International Maritime Organization, a British-based U.N. agency with 168 member nations that oversees shipping safety and security.
A new U.N.-administered international trust fund also is being set up, with Germany and Norway becoming the first to pledge hundreds of thousands of dollars to it to help pay for transporting witnesses, collecting evidence and other costs of prosecuting pirates that the IMO is prohibited from covering.
"This is not a magic bullet. It does not solve all the problems of piracy, but it's an important step forward in the comprehensive approach that we're trying to get," Thomas Countryman, a U.S. State Department principal deputy assistant secretary leading the effort, said Thursday night.
Informally organized by the United States, the so-called "Contact Group" on Somali piracy met all day in a closed chamber at U.N. headquarters to discuss financing for prosecutions, coordination of international naval patrols and how to prevent money-laundering and discourage governments and shipping companies from paying ransoms to pirates.
So far this year there have been more than 150 pirate attacks off the Horn of Africa, a 50 percent increase over last year's total, said Masafumi Ishii, a Japanese Foreign Ministry ambassador who oversaw Thursday's meeting...MORE..http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jLMzu0JyhToX_nFp_1ivgaj-dqFgD9AKQKUO2