World Dec. 03, 2008 - 04:31AM JST ( 3 )

MOGADISHU —

Somalia’s insurgent Islamist leader called on pirates Tuesday to immediately release a giant Saudi oil tanker and other foreign vessels, while a NATO warship foiled a new attack in the Gulf of Aden.

“We are calling for the immediate release of all international vessels under the command of Somali pirates, who are undermining international peace and trade,” Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys said from the Eritrean capital Asmara.

The pirates have demanded a $25 million ransom for the 330-meter Sirius Star which was carrying two million barrels of crude oil and 25 crew when it was seized on Nov 15.

The tanker is one of more than a dozen foreign merchant vessels and their crew being held by gunmen on the lawless Somali coast.

In a further illustration of the pirates’ growing audacity on Tuesday, a NATO warship prevented a swarm of more than a dozen pirate boats from hijacking five merchant shipping vessels in the Gulf of Aden, the alliance said.

Alerted by a distress call, the Italian navy destroyer put itself between the ships and a group of pirate “fast boats,” with all vessels using water hoses to repel the pirates.

The Italian warship also used its helicopter against the pirates, dispersing their attack, a NATO official said.

“This is probably the biggest multiple, coordinated attack we’ve seen,” the official said, adding that more than 12 pirate boats were involved, perhaps as many as 20.

Also on Tuesday, a Greek bulk ship released by pirates last week reached the Kenyan port of Mombasa with its 26 Filipino crew.

The Islamist leader’s appeal came a day after a Miami-based company said one of its cruise liners with 600 people aboard narrowly escaped being boarded by pirates as it crossed the Gulf of Aden at the weekend.

The brazen attempts by the heavily-armed pirates have come despite the presence of an international naval force.

NATO has four ships—from Britain, Greece, Italy and Turkey—on patrol in the waters off Somalia, with two protecting UN food aid convoys to the strife-torn Horn of Africa country.

The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday expressed its support for a European anti-piracy naval mission to begin Dec 8.

Leader of an umbrella opposition group called the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia, Aweys said the pirates would have been stamped out if Somalia were still under the control of his Islamist group.

“We are the only force that could eliminate piracy in the Somalia waters but the world refused to give us the opportunity to rule Somalia, despite the will of the vast majority of the people of Somalia.

“If we are given the opportunity to fight piracy and general lawlessness we can do that comfortably. Piracy is part of lawlessness and during our months of Islamic leadership pirates were underground,” he said.

His Islamic Courts Union ruled most of south and central Somalia for six months in 2006 before being ousted by Ethiopian forces who intervened to prop up its neighbor’s weak central government.

The intervention of the influential cleric, designated a terrorist by Washington because of alleged ties to al-Qaida, is likely to bring some pressure to bear on the pirates, but he ruled out any direct mediation effort on the part of his organization.

He said the pirates, also negotiating a multimillion-dollar ransom for an arms-laden Ukraine cargo ship, the “Faina,” as well as a host of other foreign vessels and their crews, “are dealing with the world as if they were legitimate agencies, by talking about ransom money.”

The leader of the gunmen who seized the Saudi supertanker said later Tuesday they were “waiting for a favourable reply from the owners” two days after a Nov 30 deadline had passed for the ransom payment.

“Unfortunately the company is talking to ghost mediators and elements that have no powers over us.”

Aweys equated the rampant piracy to the intervention of Ethiopian forces in his country.

“It is so painful to see Somalia taken by Ethiopian colonial occupation and crazy pirates. Both are the same and undermine human value.”

Motivated by the need to fill the vacuum left by the fall of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, Aweys founded Mogadishu’s first Islamic court in the mid-1990s.

Wire reports