"Since this piracy is confined to a fairly small region of the ocean"

The trouble is that it is not, the coast of Somalia, the Horn of Africa and the approaches to the Red Sea is only one area where piracy exists. The Malacca Straits (where the warning phrase associated with pirates and designed to scare, "The boogie-man'll get you" was first coined) is as bad if not worse and off the West Coast of Africa are another two.

You deal with it in exactly the same manner as it was dealt with previously, I'll amend what Charmion suggested as follows:

"Piracy won't go away until somebody acts in a frankly imperial manner to straighten out the mess."

Piracy has always been dealt with harshly because an attack at sea means that survivors of the initial attack are entirely at the mercy of their attackers, they are on a ship in the middle of an ocean, they cannot get away. As such the easiest and most efficient means of dealing with prisoners has been to put them to death - "Dead men tell no tales". Historically the "law of the sea", demanded the same fate for Pirates, summary justice.

I can remember a conversation while I was in the Navy when Harold Wilson announced the plan to withdraw from "East of Suez", one participant in this discussion stated, "10 years after we leave Singapore, piracy in the South China Sea and in the Straits of Singapore will be as much of a problem as it was one hundred years ago". His prediction has proved to be true. By that time we had already quit Aden and pirates had already begun to operate from the small islands in the approaches to the Red Sea.

The vessel currently being held apparently was transporting Russian T-72 Battle Tanks, supposedly to Kenya for the Kenian Army, now it transpires they were bound for the Sudan, for use I would presume in Darfur. The Russian frigate that is hastening towards the scene is there to do what? Ensure that the ship and it's cargo are not destroyed??

Oh and before anyone thinks on quick fix solutions, there aren't any. Again as stated previously it will take time, effort and a great deal of expense if you want to protect your trade - it always has - in the areas we are talking about between the early 1800's up to about the mid-1960's that protection was provided courtesy of the Royal Navy and the "evil British Empire". On thing is for certain the United Nations will do damn all about it, simply because it has nothing to do anything about it with.

But a good start would be to make sure anybody toddling about a beach or quayside in Somalia think twice about setting out to sea in anything.