[classicman]

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Somalia's prime minister says his government has identified many pirate leaders but needs more resources and the help of other countries to go after them.

"We have information on who is behind this, who is involved," Sharmarke said. "There is a lot of money flowing in ... we are following very closely how money is distributed here."

Somali pirates can earn $1 million or more in ransom for each hijacked ship. Forty-two ships were hijacked by Somali pirates last year, and so far 19 have been taken this year.

He said the Somali government was presenting a plan to envoys from the European Union, the United States and a regional authority to fight pirates by building up military forces and establishing intelligence-gathering posts along its coastline.

"The best way to actually deal with this is to prevent (the pirates) from going into the waters," Sharmarke said. "We will have to do military actions ... We are planning to establish at least 10 or more observation posts on the coastline."

Still, it was not clear how this plan could cover the 1,900-mile Somali coastline, since his government controls only a few square blocks of the capital, Mogadishu, with the aid of African peacekeepers.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a new initiative Wednesday to fight the escalating scourge of piracy by freezing pirates' assets. In January, the U.S. government proposed $5 million in funding to improve the Somali security services, a request that is currently before Congress.

I wonder if our giving them $5 million is really going to make a dent. This is such a forked up situation.

The cruel fact is that even as Americans celebrated the rescue, the Somali pirates — in what is business as usual off of Somalia’s long ungoverned coast— were grabbing more ships. There are now 17 captured ships and about 260 hostages waiting to be ransomed. The short-term answer is more patrols and better cooperation with regional states; a long-term solution, alas, remains elusive.

At a million a ship/hostage - we are about $272 million behind.