G8 Foreign Ministers agree to support training of Coast Guards From Gulf of Aden

The world's eight most powerful industrialized nations will support the training of coast guards from the Gulf of Aden in a bid to fight piracy, G8 foreign ministers agreed at a meeting in the Italian port of Trieste on Friday.

"We shall help personnel from concerned states to take maximum advantage of training opportunities" offered by international sea-safety bodies, the ministers said in a joint statement. "It is urgent to assist regional states in building their own capacity of adequately controlling their borders, coasts and territorial waters," the statement said. All the G8's members - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US - have sent warships to fight piracy off the coast of Somalia, either alone or under the ensigns of NATO and the European Union. But their efforts are increasingly focusing on long-term prevention, boosting stability and economic growth in the regions where the pirates operate, reports dpa. "We agreed on the need for a strengthened international commitment to target the root causes of piracy ... such as poverty, ongoing conflicts, lawlessness and the lack of a strong central authority," the G8 statement said.

Anti-pirate efforts have been hampered by legal complications, as some of the countries with warships in the affected area have no law for dealing with pirates detained in international waters.

The G8 ministers called for "the development of adequate legal frameworks to fight piracy," and hailed Kenya, which has agreed to take in pirates detained by EU ships, for its "leadership role."G8 diplomats agreed to coordinate future work so that they could "provide maximum support" to anti-pirate effort.

Source:Ecoterra, June 26, 2009

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