Egypt shows no signs of military response to piracy

By Jonathan Wright

CAIRO (Reuters) - Marauding seamen infest the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, extracting tolls from shipping and disrupting an ancient trade route between Asia and Europe.

Egypt, one of the main direct beneficiaries of the transit trade, takes time to react. The government is in the hands of an aging leader, who looks to outside powers for help.

That was the challenge that Mamluk ruler Qansuh al-Ghouri faced in the early 16th century, when Portuguese ships appeared unexpectedly east of Suez and started to harass Egypt-bound shipping in the Red Sea and its approaches.

After centuries of peaceful trading, Egypt had no Red Sea fleet capable of countering the Portuguese menace. It may have underestimated the danger, despite diplomatic overtures from Venice, Yemen and the princes who ruled the west coast of India.

Egypt's first response to the threat from Somali pirates this year has also been cautious, given that it is probably the country with most to lose if more shipping companies avoid the Suez Canal and divert their fleets to the Cape of Good Hope.

Egypt, which has some frigates capable of patrolling the Gulf of Aden, has not deployed any warships to the area, where ships from India, Russia, NATO, the United States and the European Union are trying to suppress Somalia-based piracy.

"They (the Egyptians) have been slow to respond ... As yet, I'm not aware of them making any formal approaches to take part in the naval forces that are operating in the area," said Jason Alderwick, defense analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London.

President Hosni Mubarak, 80 years old and in power for 27 years, last week played down the gravity of the problem and gave no indication of imminent action by Egypt.

"The pirate operations threaten the whole international community, not the Suez Canal and Egyptian sovereignty," he told Egyptian newspaper editors last Thursday.

"This problem could come to an end if merchant ships arm themselves with heavy artillery to deal with the pirates," he added, quoted in the state newspaper al-Gomhuria.

A senior government official, who asked not to be named, said on Monday that the Somali-based piracy was "not a problem" and Mubarak had not received any proposals from the Ministry of Defence to intervene militarily.

REGIONAL MEETING

A Ministry of Defence official, who also asked not to be named, said that piracy was an international problem and had to be solved in an international framework.

A Defence Ministry spokesman referred questions on Egypt's response to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which said it had no word of any military preparations.

Egypt and Yemen did organize a meeting of the Arab League states on the Red Sea littoral in Cairo last week but the senior officials also deferred to international initiatives.