By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar pressed the head of the United Nations’ maritime agency on Monday for “urgent and effective institutional intervention” to free 10 Pakistani sailors who have been held by Somali pirates since April, as the hostages’ families report worsening conditions aboard the hijacked tanker.
Dar raised the case in a meeting with Arsenio Dominguez, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization, on the first full day of a four-day official visit to Britain. He thanked Dominguez for the organization’s support of Pakistan’s efforts to win the sailors’ release and pressed him to use the IMO’s influence to speed their return, according to a statement from Pakistan’s Foreign Office.
The 10 men are among 17 crew members who were seized when armed pirates boarded MT Honour 25, a Palau-flagged oil tanker, off the coast of Puntland in northern Somalia on April 21. Four months later, negotiations over the crew’s release have made no visible progress, and a ransom demand believed to total roughly $3 million remains unpaid.
The delay has taken a toll on the hostages. Since the hijacking, crew members have recorded emotional video and audio appeals describing dwindling supplies of food, clean water and medicine. Relatives who have spoken with the sailors by phone have told Pakistani officials that the men are experiencing health problems and have urged Islamabad to intensify its efforts on their behalf.
Complicating the case is a dispute over who actually owns the vessel. The man initially believed to be MT Honour 25’s owner has since appeared to be a middleman who arranged for the crew’s hiring rather than the ship’s true owner, leaving the hostages caught in what amounts to an ownership crisis with no clear party positioned to negotiate or pay for their release. Pakistan’s Foreign Office has said previously that the ship’s owner and Somali authorities remain in contact with the pirates and are negotiating on the crew’s behalf, while Islamabad has pressed both parties to ensure food, water and other necessities keep reaching the hostages.
The Foreign Office has also acknowledged that a rescue operation carries its own risks: officials have said law enforcement action to free the sailors is complicated by the fact that MT Honour 25 is carrying explosive cargo.
Besides the 10 Pakistanis, the tanker’s crew includes seven Indonesian nationals, one Indian and one Sri Lankan.
Earlier this month, Dar directed Pakistani officials to step up diplomatic engagement with Somali authorities, international organizations and other partners in an effort to break the impasse. Monday’s meeting with Dominguez marked the latest step in that push, bringing the matter directly to the IMO’s leadership during Dar’s visit to London.
In the same meeting, Dar reaffirmed what the Foreign Office described as Pakistan’s longstanding commitment to the IMO, calling it the principal international regulatory body overseeing safe, secure and efficient global shipping. He outlined Pakistan’s efforts to strengthen its maritime governance, adopt international shipping standards and expand its blue economy, and the two officials discussed deepening cooperation between Pakistan and the IMO on maritime safety, security and regulatory reform.
Dar arrived in the United Kingdom on Sunday night ahead of a visit scheduled to run through Friday. During the trip, he is expected to meet UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband and Stephen Doughty, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s minister of state for Pakistan, along with other senior members of the British government, British parliamentarians and representatives of the Pakistani diaspora in the UK.
The visit follows an agreement reached in July between Pakistan and Britain to deepen bilateral trade ties and expand business-to-business cooperation, when the two countries discussed elevating their existing Trade Dialogue into a more structured economic and trade framework.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
