India, China and the Pirates

March 06, 2012  By Nitin Gokhale

An agreement between China, India and Japan to coordinate over combating piracy in the Gulf of Aden is an encouraging sign of military cooperation. But it’s no panacea.

Relations between India and China look increasingly to be running along two parallel tracks – one of cooperation, the other competition.

While New Delhi and Beijing keep a wary eye on each other’s activities along the border, there’s growing engagement at the highest political and diplomatic levels. For example, Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna made a three-day visit to China last month, meeting key Chinese leaders ahead of the BRICS summit to be hosted by India in April. As The Hindu newspaper reported at the time, “China appears to have laid out the red carpet for Mr. Krishna, arranging four high-level meetings for the minister in one day – a rare occurrence, according to diplomats.”

Krishna held talks with Chinese Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang and State Councillor Dai Bingguo, a meeting that followed Dai’s trip to India the previous month. Dai is China’s Special Representative on the boundary talks, and the two countries tooka major confidence building step in January, setting up an institutionalized border mechanism that “allows for real time contact between the two countries’ foreign offices in the event of a border intrusion by either side.”

Pirates free crew of Italian ship, $600K ransom likely paid

Image by doneastwest via Flickr

November 26, 2011 8:44pm

Some $600,000 in ransom may have been paid for this weekend’s release of an Italian vessel with 15 Filipino crewmembers that Somalian pirates seized last April.

News site Somalia Report quoted sources who said the pirates released the “Rosalia D’Amato” late Friday shortly after receiving the ransom.

“Yes, my friends in Garacad area released MV Rosalia D’Amato, the Italian-flagged oil tanker last night, after a helicopter dropped a ransom. They are now on land and busy dividing the ransom,” it quoted Mohamed Ahmed, a pirate in Bari region, as saying.

“We heard that their owners paid a ransom. We are now tightening the security around Garacad and Jariban because the pirates can cause insecurity as they try to share the ransom,” Gen. Abdulaahi Yusuf, Puntland’s police officer in Jariban District told Somalia Report.

It also quoted a senior police officer in Puntland’s Jariban district, which controls Garacad village in Mudug Region, as saying the pirates have released the vessel.