More protection for ships in pirate waters sought

The president of a New York company whose freighter was attacked by pirates with rocket-propelled grenades off the coast of Somalia told Congress on Wednesday that the government should place armed personnel on U.S. ships carrying humanitarian cargo overseas.

A Pentagon official said the military has limited resources at a time when the country is waging two wars.

Philip Shapiro, president and chief executive of the Liberty Maritime Corp., told a House Transportation subcommittee that U.S. merchant ships sailing high-risk waters immediately need the protection of security teams or U.S. Navy escorts.

"In our view, small embarked security teams are a more effective deterrent than patrolling the entire million square miles of ocean that are affected," he said.

Shapiro said Congress also should make it easier for merchant ships to arm themselves, which he said is difficult to do because of recently enacted State Department regulations on arms exports.

On April 14, pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at the Liberty Sun as it carried food for famine-wracked African nations. A U.S. Navy destroyer, the USS Bainbridge, responded to the attack, but the pirates had departed by the time it arrived. No crew member was hurt, Shapiro said.

"Responding after the fact," Shapiro said, "in our view is not the most effective means of protecting the few U.S.-flagged vessels transiting the pirate danger zone."

The attack on the Liberty Sun came just days after the Maersk Alabama, another merchant ship carrying humanitarian aid to Africa, scuffled with Somali pirates and its captain was taken hostage.

The International Maritime Bureau recorded 111 attacks in the waters off the Horn of Africa in 2008, almost double the number the year before. The bureau has recorded at least 84 attacks in the first quarter of this year.

Edward Frothingham, a senior global threats official at the Defense Department, said many pirate attacks are unsuccessful and committing military resources off the coast of Africa has "grave implications for us."

Frothingham said some U.S.-flagged ships carrying only Defense Department cargo do get additional protections, such as security teams or special training for their crews.

While the government offers guidelines and strategies on dealing with pirates and can come to the rescue when an attack occurs, he acknowledged that most merchant ships have to fend for themselves.

"We would ask them to rely on their own devices as we would a homeowner in a neighborhood, counting on the police support... It's the allocation of risk," he said.

(This version CORRECTS by deleting erroneous reference to Maersk Alabama as U.S. ship. It is a U.S.-flagged ship.)