Solution lies with onshore stability

* Somali security forces need strengthening

By Andrew Cawthorne and Abdiaziz Hassan

NAIROBI, April 12 (Reuters) – Rampant piracy off Somalia can only be stopped with stability and security onshore, not by international navies patrolling ever-larger stretches of sea, the Horn of Africa nation’s fledgling government said.

“It is a tragedy that things should have come to this stage,” Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Omaar told Reuters about the upsurge of attacks on foreign ships including the gripping case of an American hostage on a lifeboat.

“But also this demonstrates clearly and categorically that the issue is based on land and has to be resolved on land.”

Omaar said the international community should focus resources on helping build up national security forces for the government that is the 15th attempt to restore central rule to Somalia since it slipped into anarchy in 1991.

“We can certainly resolve (piracy) in partnership with the international community. Our first priority is to re-establish the rule of law. For that, we have requested from the foreign community assistance to build our security forces,” he said.

Omaar, 55, a British-educated businessman and consultant from an influential Somali diaspora family, has been travelling around the world since his appointment in February to rally support for President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s government.

“The international community is as much in need of rule of law in Somalia as the people of Somalia,” he said, noting the impact of piracy on global trade via strategic shipping lanes.

Ahmed’s administration, which has broad domestic and international support, is still seen as the best chance for stability in years, diplomats say, despite facing an Islamist insurgency and controlling little beyond areas of the capital.

The government is building up an army and police force of around 20,000 men but so far has little to no sea capability.

Omaar said the deployment of naval ships from about a dozen countries since the end of 2008 had not worked against the pirates. Mainly focused in the Gulf of Aden, the patrols have driven the gangs to operate ever further in the Indian Ocean.

U.S. hostage and ship captain Richard Phillips’ vessel was attacked several hundred miles off the Somali coast in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday.

His American crew retook control of the Maersk Alabama ship, but four pirates have Phillips on a lifeboat.

FRUSTRATIONS

“It’s clear the varieties of international forces that have come to the waters of Somalia are not able to resolve the issue,” Omaar said. “The reason is that we are talking about one million square kilometres (386,100 sq miles) of sea, the size of Spain.”

“It is very frustrating, because why this government came into existence is because the people of Somalia decided they had had enough of war,” he added in the interview late on Saturday.

Omaar said poverty did not justify people going into piracy.

“There are 3 million Somalis in various parts of the country who are displaced. They have not resorted to criminality to survive,” he said.

“Those in this affair are in it for money and they have been in it for years. They cannot claim poverty.”

Experts and Somalis say pirates operate with impunity by buying off local warlords and officials. Some former government ministers have in the past been accused of complicity.

But Omaar insisted the new administration would be clean.

“It is totally inconceivable that anyone who is in a position of authority in this government, knowingly or unknowingly, would get involved in ransoms and piracy. There is no way that people can do it. We are categorically opposed,” said Omaar.

“Why is it that we are not assisted for this war against piracy? Why are we not being given assistance to tackle this?”

The minister condemned ransom payments from ship owners, which experts say are a big factor fuelling piracy.

“This is paying criminal activity. Why should someone who is acting against national and international be rewarded?” he said. (Editing by Jack Kimball and Sophie Hares)