‘Regional anti-piracy drive paying off’

continues but if it grows we want to be able to improve the quality of our reaction,” Mozambican Defence Minister Filipe Nyusi said.
Military representatives from Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania met in Maputo yesterday to thrash out details of an agreement signed in Dar es Salaam last February.
They aim to pool their resources in a bid to secure the coastlines of the three countries in the face of Somali piracy moving southward to Mozambican waters and eastward to India due to increased international naval patrols to curb hijackings on the Horn of Africa.
“We are using what each country has. Some ships from South Africa, some of our own and some from Tanzania. We are also involving the air force,” said Nyusi.
Mozambique’s navy does not have a warship equipped to combat pirates in the deep ocean                          however, so South Africa’s supply vessel, the SS             Drakensberg currently patrols the Mozambican channel.
“Since our participation in this part of the world, we have seen the fishermen back into the waters being able to conduct their livelihood,” South African navy chief, Vice Admiral Refiloe Mudimo said.
Tanzania would not divulge its naval capability but said it had recently managed to ward off a pirate attack in its waters.
The Mozambican government is increasingly worried about the danger of piracy in its far northern waters where multi-national consortiums have made large natural gas discoveries.
In January last year pirates hijacked a Spanish fishing boat off the coast of central Mozambique and the 14 fishermen were eventually rescued by the Indian navy.
In December 2010 two cargo carriers thwarted hijacking attempts in the country’s northern waters. — AFP.