Somali pirates deny shootout, renew ransom demand

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali pirates holding a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 tanks reiterated their demands for a $20 million ransom on Tuesday and denied three of their number had died in a shootout.

A maritime group monitoring the situation had earlier said three pirates were killed in a shootout between rival gunmen on the MV Faina, seized six days ago in the most high-profile of a wave of hijackings off lawless Somalia this year.

"We want $20 million ransom from the ship and we are 53 Somalis," said Sugule, the spokesman of the pirates onboard the Ukrainian ship, which is being shadowed by U.S. navy vessels.

"I will not talk about mediators or negotiation because we are at risk. I will not name where we are particularly but we are on the coast of Somalia," he told Reuters, adding the pirates would stay on board until their demands were met.

The capture of the MV Faina has sparked controversy over the destination of its cargo and thrown a spotlight on rampant piracy in one of the world's busiest shipping areas connecting Europe to Asia and the Middle East.

The East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme, monitoring the hijacking via relatives of the crew and contacts with pirates, had earlier said that factions had argued over whether to free the cargo and crew.

But the pirates denied there had been any fighting.

"There are two American warships near us but we have neither fought nor communicated with them," Sugule said
Two other pirates and a regional leader had earlier told Reuters there had been no shootout. Sugule said one of the 21 crew members had died due to illness.

The U.S. navy has said the ship, which was heading for Kenya's Mombasa port, was carrying T-72 tanks, grenade-launchers and ammunition ultimately bound for south Sudan via Kenya.

Kenya says the weaponry was for its own military.

Taking advantage of chaos on shore, where an Islamist-led insurgency has raged for nearly two years, Somali pirates have seized more than 30 ships this year and attacked many more.

RICH PIRATES

Most attacks have been in the Gulf of Aden between Yemen and north Somalia, a major global sea artery used by about 20,000 vessels a year heading to and from the Suez Canal. The pirates have also struck in the busy Indian Ocean waters off south Somalia.

With U.S. and French military bases in the area, many are unhappy with the lack of international action.

"If civil aircraft were being hijacked on a daily basis, the response of governments would be very different," top shipping trade bodies and transport unions said in a joint statement.

"Yet ships, which are the lifeblood of the global economy, are seemingly out of sight and out of mind."
As well as using ransom money to build new homes and take new wives, the increasingly rich pirates have bought speedboats, satellite phones and other equipment to aid their trade.

"There is a striking similarity between the actions of these unscrupulous pirates and the activity in 'blood diamonds' in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the civil wars in these countries," said U.N. envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah.

"No ship, big or small, civil or military, is spared. With the seizure of the Ukrainian ship, a new line has been crossed."

U.S. analyst J. Peter Pham, of Madison University, called for a united international naval response, more attention to solving Somalia's civil conflict, and better protection equipment on board commercial vessels.

"Many have done little aside from being prepared to pay ransoms which only perpetuate the cycle of violence," he wrote in a new report on the Somali piracy phenomenon.

Tensions Rise Over Ship Hijacked Off Somalia

NAIROBI, Kenya — Tensions increased Sunday over what to do about the arms-carrying cargo ship hijacked off the coast of Somalia, as the pirates vowed to fight to the death, a hostage died and Somali officials urged the American Navy to send in commandos.

According to a broadcast on the BBC Somali service, the pirates said that they could see an American destroyer nearby and several military aircraft tracking them, but that they were not afraid.

“They can’t catch us like goats,” said a man who said he was a spokesman for the pirates. “We will fight, and everyone here will die with us.”

The man said he was speaking on a satellite phone from the bridge of the hijacked Ukrainian ship, and to prove it, he handed the phone to another man who said he was the captain. The captain, a Ukrainian, then told the BBC that a Russian crew member had died from hypertension.

A band of pirates hijacked the ship on Thursday evening as it was heading to Kenya with a large supply of arms, including 33 T-72 battle tanks, grenade launchers and ammunition, all for the Kenyan military.

Somali officials said Sunday that the ship was anchored a few miles off the coast between Xarardheere and Hobyo, two notorious pirate dens where several other hijacked vessels have been taken. The pirates said they would not release the 20 crew members or the arms until they were paid $20 million in cash.

Somali officials said there might be no way to resolve the standoff other than storming the ship.

“A military operation has to be taken,” said Ahmed Said Aw-nur, minister of fisheries for the semiautonomous state of Puntland in northern Somalia.

“If the Islamists get the arms,” he said, referring to Islamist insurgents currently waging war on Somalia’s weak government, “they will cause problems for all of Somalia.”

American military officials said that they were closely watching the ship but that there were no plans to raid it.

“We’re deeply concerned about what’s aboard, as well as the safety of the crew,” said Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain. “We’re hoping the arms don’t make it to shore.”

Lieutenant Christensen said the American destroyer Howard was following the hijacked ship from less than five miles away and communicating with it via bridge-to-bridge radio.

Pakistani and American Troops Exchange Fire

WASHINGTON — Pakistani and American ground troops exchanged fire along the border with Afghanistan on Thursday, a top American military official said, ratcheting up tensions as the United States increases its attacks against militants in Pakistan’s restive tribal areas.

The clash started after the Pakistanis fired shots or flares at two American helicopters that Pakistan says had crossed its border.

The two American OH-58 Kiowa reconnaissance helicopters were not damaged and no casualties were reported.

But American and Pakistani officials agreed on little else about what happened.

American and NATO officials said that the two helicopters were flying about one mile inside Afghan airspace to protect an American and Afghan patrol on the ground when the aircraft were fired on by troops at a Pakistani military checkpoint near the Tanai district in Khost Province. The officials said small-caliber arms were used.

In response, the American ground troops shot short bursts of warning fire, which hit well shy of the checkpoint, and the Pakistanis fired back, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a spokesman for the United States Central Command.

But a spokesman for the Pakistani Army, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said Pakistani forces fired warning shots at the American aircraft after they crossed into Pakistan’s territory in the area of Saidgai, in the Ghulam Khan region of North Waziristan. “On this, the helicopters returned fire and flew back,” General Abbas said. The general’s statement did not address the account of ground fire.

Local residents said that one of the two helicopters had entered inside Pakistan territory by about a mile, while the other hovered on the Afghan side of the border.

“When our forces fired warning shots, we were a little scared of a possible retaliatory fire from the helicopters,” said one of the residents, Hajji Said Rehman Gorbaz. “But we were happy to see the helicopter flying back into Afghanistan. We were happy that our forces fired at the helicopter.”

Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, said Thursday that his nation’s military had fired only flares at the helicopters, seeming to draw a distinction with warning “shots,” which usually refers to bullets or other ordnance that could more seriously damage the helicopters.

“They are flares,” Mr. Zardari said as he sat down to meet Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the United Nations. He said the flares would alert the pilots that they had crossed the border, which he said is rugged and poorly marked.

Ms. Rice agreed that the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan was “very, very unclear.”

But the encounter drew immediate protest from Pentagon officials in Washington. “The flight path of the helicopters at no point took them over Pakistan,” a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, told reporters.

Mr. Whitman said United States and NATO military officials were speaking to their Pakistani counterparts to determine what happened and to ensure there was no repeat, adding, “The Pakistanis have to provide us with a better understanding of why this took place.”

General Abbas, the Pakistani spokesman, said the clash had been reported to NATO headquarters in Kabul and was under investigation by Pakistani and NATO officials.

Military officials and diplomats said the episode showed there was a risk of a much more serious, and lethal, misunderstanding along the border.

Pakistani civilian leaders have denounced an incursion by American Special Operations forces into Pakistan on Sept. 3, which was authorized under orders given by President Bush in July, and the Pakistani Army has vowed to defend its border.

Yousaf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s prime minister, told reporters on Wednesday, “We will not tolerate any act against our sovereignty and integrity in the name of the war against terrorism.”

The United States says its goal is to stop attacks on troops in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda and by Taliban militants based in Pakistan.

The latest clash on Thursday comes after a week of claims by Pakistani intelligence officials that American helicopters had strayed across the border, and that an American remotely piloted surveillance aircraft had crashed, apparently because of a mechanical failure, in Pakistani territory.

American officials denied these claims, saying they were being manufactured by Pakistani officials in response to rising anti-American sentiment in Pakistan after the increased American activities in the border area.

TERROR SUSPECTS CAUGHT IN GERMANY

German police say they boarded a Dutch airliner at the Cologne airport early Friday and arrested two men suspected of planning to carry out terrorist attacks.

Authorities identified the suspects as a 23-year-old Somali and a 24-year-old German citizen of Somali origin.

A police spokesman said notes indicating that the men were ready to die in a holy war had been found in their apartments and that they had been under police surveillance for several months.

However, police authorities say they do not think the men intended to hijack the Amsterdam-bound KLM plane.

A KLM spokesman says all the passengers had to exit the plane to be matched with their luggage.

The plane eventually flew to Amsterdam without any further incidents.

Obama up nine on McCain in new poll

CLEARWATER, Florida (AFP) — Barack Obama capitalized on financial turmoil and surged to a nine point lead in a new national poll which Wednesday revealed new signs that the crisis was hurting his foe John McCain.

The Democratic Senator, prepping in Florida for his first presidential debate with Republican McCain on Friday, also opened a 53 percent to 39 percent gap over McCain on who voters trust most to handle the economy in the ABC News/Washington Post survey.

The McCain campaign however rejected the poll as an outlier which failed to capture relative levels of party identification in what other recent polls have portrayed as a tight race ahead of the November 4 election.

The poll came as both candidates pick through the political minefield sown by the 700 billion dollar Bush administration bailout package for staggering Wall Street and growing pessimism in the heartland about the economy.

The poll finds Obama leading among likely voters by 52 percent to 43 percent. Just two weeks ago, before the crisis really took hold, he had a slim two point lead with the race a statistical dead-heat.

While the lead is wider than in other polls, it does share findings of several recent surveys that the economy and the Wall Street meltdown are having a direct impact on the election.

Only nine percent of those surveyed agreed that US economy was in good or excellent shape, the first time since 1992 that number has been in the single digits, the Post said.

Just 14 percent said the country is moving in the right direction -- the lowest figure since 1973.

Asked who they trust more to handle the economy, 53 percent chose Obama and 39 percent, McCain.

In a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll also published Wednesday, 48 percent of respondents said Obama could do a better job handling the financial crisis, and 35 percent said McCain could.

McCain's veteran pollster Bill McInturff dismissed the Post poll as a rogue reading that failed to capture relative levels of party identification among voters, which he said matched other polls suggesting a much tighter race.

"It's just easy to say, politely, that this one poll is an unusual outlier that does not represent where this campaign is nor where it's headed in the next day or two before we get to the first debate," he said on a conference call.

A National Public Radio poll meanwhile gave McCain the edge, putting him up two points on Obama in 14 battleground states, where Obama had led by three points in August.

In a Rasmussen daily tracking poll on Wednesday, Obama led McCain by just two points 49 percent to 47 percent. In Tuesday's Gallup Daily poll the Democrat led by 47 percent to 44 percent.

McCain made his latest attempt to recapture the initiative on the economy on Wednesday, meeting with his team of high-powered economic advisors to discuss the 700 billion dollar proposed Wall Street bailout.

He refused to say whether he would back the plan, which is running into increasing opposition in Congress, contradicting comments by the Senate's top Democrat Harry Reid.

McCain was asked by reporters about comments in which Senate Majority leader Reid said he had received "good news" that the Arizona senator was committed to supporting the bailout.

"I did not say that," said McCain, who has warned the oversight provisions in the package are insufficient and spoken out against the notion of rewarding disgraced Wall Street tycoons with taxpayer handouts.

The Hill newspaper, which covers Congress, quoted Reid as saying late Tuesday that McCain would back the package, which is running into trouble on both sides of the political aisle on Capitol Hill.

"I got some good news in the last hour or so -- it appears that Senator McCain is going to come out for this," Reid was quoted as saying.

Abdul Subhan Qureshi, known as India's bin Laden, named as bombing suspect

Judging by Abdul Subhan Qureshi’s early CV he should be a poster boy of the new India: educated at a church school, he studied electronics and software before joining a high-tech firm in Bombay in 1996.

Instead, this is the man now being described as India’s Osama bin Laden.

Police today named Mr Qureshi, 36, as the main suspect in the multiple bombings that killed at least 24 people in popular shopping areas in Delhi on Saturday.

They also suspect that he was behind a similar attack that killed 61 in the city of Jaipur in May, and two others that killed 45 people in Bangalore and Ahmedabad in July.

And they believe that he is the one who has hacked into wireless Internet networks and used the alias “al-Arbi” to sign e-mails claiming responsibility for the attacks on behalf of a group called the Indian Mujahideen.

He also uses the aliases Tauqir Bilal and Qasim and has become adept at changing his appearance, according to police and Intelligence Bureau officers.

Investigators still believe that the Indian Mujahideen is a front for the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which has been blamed for many other attacks.

What is new is the suggestion that Mr Qureshi masterminded the recent bombings, rather than the Pakistani or Bangladeshi radicals previously thought to be behind SIMI.

“Finding Qureshi … could prove key to preventing the next big terror bombings. But the threat will not end with his arrest,” Praveen Swami, an expert on Islamic extremism in India, wrote in a profile of Mr Qureshi.

“Investigations of other SIMI-linked terror cells have thrown up evidence which suggests Qureshi trained several hundred recent recruits … at camps held across India from 2007 onwards.”

Mr Qureshi’s alleged role is all the more troubling as he does not fit the conventional profile of Islamic extremists in India: unlike many of its 151 million Muslims, he had education and economic opportunities.

His parents came from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh – India’s poorest and most populous – but migrated to Bombay and sent him to Antonio De Souza High School, a church-run institution catering to all major religions.

He graduated from there in 1988, earned a diploma in industrial electronics in 1995 and a specialised software maintenance qualification in 1996 before joining a computer firm later that year.

After handling several major projects, he moved to a larger computer company.

In March 2001, however, he quit suddenly, saying in a letter: “I wish to inform you that I have decided to devote one complete year to pursue religious and spiritual matters.” Police now believe that Mr Qureshi joined SIMI as early as 1998 and helped to organise its conferences in 1999 and 2001 before going underground after the group was banned later that year.

They are unclear about what he did over the next seven years, but say that SIMI members arrested after the May and July bombings have told them that he masterminded the attacks and sent the e-mails.

Police also say that Mr Qureshi was in Delhi between August 23 and 25, but the e-mail about Saturday’s blasts appears to have been sent from a wireless network in Bombay, where the Anti-Terror Squad is now searching for him.

PLANE MISHAP

92 die in Russian, Australian air mishaps
ANOTHER Boeing 737 crashed yesterday in Russia killing all 88 passengers, and crew on board. It was the second crash of that plane type in a month in the former Soviet Union.

ZIMBABWE POLITICS

Zimbabwe rivals agree on new cabinet, to sign deal today
AFTER months of ruinous stand-off between President Robert Mugabe and the opposition, Zimbabwe's leaders are today set to sign a historic deal to divide power among political rivals.

THABO MBEKI

Mbeki's fate under debate after Zuma's court ruling
THE ruling African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa will this week discuss a court judgment that implied that President Thabo Mbeki's government meddled in a graft case against chief rival Jacob Zuma.

US elections

U.S. campaign becomes nastier with new revelations about Palin
REPUBLICAN vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin yesterday faced accusations of handing jobs to friends while serving as Alaska State governor, as the presidential campaign grew increasingly negative.