Australian security official to head UN investigations on Hariri assassination

UNSC extends probe into assassination of former Lebanese prime minister

Bahrain arrests suspected terror cell, German hostages in Yemen freed

UNSC gives thumbs up to use of force against Somali pirates

The Security Council extended for a further two months the mandate of the independent probe into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri and several other political killings in Lebanon.

The 15-member body set up the International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC) for Lebanon in April 2005 after an earlier United Nations mission found that Lebanon’s own inquiry into the massive car bombing that killed Mr. Hariri and 22 others was seriously flawed and that Syria was primarily responsible for the political tensions that preceded the attack.

The Beirut-based Commission is mandated with investigating 20 other attacks and has found additional elements linking some of them to the network behind the Hariri assassination.

The Council voted unanimously to extend the probe - whose mandate was set to expire at the end of this month - until 28 February 2009, as requested by the head of the Commission and former Canadian prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare.

Briefing the Council prior to the vote, Mr. Bellemare said the extension will allow the Commission to continue to function until the day the international tribunal being set up in The Hague to try those responsible starts to operate on 1 March.

"It would allow the momentum of the investigation to be maintained," he noted. "The extension would also provide a period of time in which the Commission could gradually transfer its investigative operations away from a Beirut base to a base in The Hague."

Speaking to reporters following the meeting, Mr. Bellemare reiterated that the investigation will continue even after the Tribunal begins its operations on 1 March.

"The indictments...will be presented to the Pre-Trial Judge for confirmation when I am satisfied that I have enough evidence to meet the threshold that is provided by the statute of the Tribunal, which is guilt beyond a reasonable doubt," he stated.

In its latest report to the Council, published last week, the Commission said it has acquired new information potentially implicating additional individuals to the network that carried out the suicide car bomb attack that killed Mr. Hariri.

"Progress has also been made in relation to identifying the geographical origin of the suicide bomber in the Hariri case and extensive work has been concluded in relation to our inventory of exhibits," Mr. Bellemare reported.

In relation to the other attacks, he said there had been two main developments: first, the Commission had found additional elements to corroborate the links already found between the Hariri case and some of the other attacks; and the Commission had found elements to link one additional attack to the Hariri case.

He stressed that it is not possible to say when the investigation will be completed or dictate its progress. "I cannot predict when all the various elements of evidence required to support an indictment will be discovered."

At the same time, he pledged to "stay the course" on all the cases within the Commission’s mandate.

"Fast food justice is not on the menu. And, let me be clear, there will be no indictment of convenience."

He added that, as well intentioned and committed as it is, the Commission cannot conduct its inquiry without information, resources and expertise from countries. "Member States that can help must share the responsibility in the investigation; they have an obligation to help the investigation."

Meanwhile, Egyptian-born Australian policeman Nick Kaldas has been appointed chief of investigations for the United Nations tribunal trying suspects of the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, Australian police said. Kaldas, the deputy commissioner of the New South Wales (NSW) police, will lead the investigations from the beginning of March next year, police commissioner Andrew Scipione said.

The tribunal was created to try those accused of involvement in a wave of political assassinations in Lebanon, including that of Hariri, who was killed with 22 others in a massive car bombing in February 2005.

Kaldas, who is fluent in Arabic, has worked primarily in major crimes and counter-terrorism for 27 years with the NSW police force and said he was honored to be chosen for the role. "Working for the UN is the closest a police officer could come to representing their country, so it is a role I take on with a great sense of responsibility," he said.

The 51-year-old deputy commissioner was previously the head of investigations into Australia's first political assassination - the shooting of NSW parliamentarian John Newman in 1994. Kaldas has also worked as a senior police adviser to the Iraqi government and assisted the Iraqi Special Tribunal which prosecuted Saddam Hussein.

Eleven judges, four of whom are Lebanese, have been nominated to the court. Their identities have not yet been released because of security concerns.

Also, the Australian Associated Press revealed that the trial of Hariri's suspected killers would be hosted in an abandoned gymnasium in a remote suburb of The Hague. The tribunal will be housed in the former headquarters of the Dutch intelligence service, an enormous building with fortress-like security. The courtroom will be built in what used to be a gymnasium for spies.

"Of all the international tribunals in The Hague, the security concerns around this one are the greatest," said registrar of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon Robin Vincent. The cost of the court, which will begin in March in Leidschendam, will amount to some $51.4 million in 2009, with Lebanon financing 49 percent of it. Use of the building, which formerly housed 700 intelligence staff, is sponsored by the Dutch state.

In one corner of the gym, a former body-building room will be transformed into an interpreters' cabin that will provide simultaneous translations of the hearings into Arabic, French and English.

Six holding cells will be constructed on the ground floor "to hold accused before their trials start [every morning] and at certain stages during the day," Vincent said. "Don't imagine that there will be six accused simply because we are constructing six cells," he warned.

Like all those brought before international tribunals in The Hague, the future detainees of the Lebanon tribunal will be held at the Scheveningen prison in a wing rented by the UN from the Dutch government.

Currently, 18 staff members are preparing for the tribunal's opening, including a legal counselor, a language expert, and a defense adviser. But in a year's time, the tribunal will employ 305 staff, 105 of them in the service of the future chief prosecutor, Canadian Daniel Bellemare. The court will eventually have some 430 employees.

Somali pirates who hijacked a Saudi oil super-tanker and demanded a $25-million ransom will release it within 72 hours, a Saudi newspaper reported.

The daily Okaz newspaper quoted Abu Bakr Dary, a source allegedly close to the pirates, as saying the tanker and its 25 crew members will be released in 72 hours, after the ship's owners agreed to pay the ransom.

Somali pirates captured the world's attention when they hijacked the Saudi-owned super-tanker Sirius Star, fully laden with two million barrels of crude last month.

"Negotiators on behalf of the owners of Sirius Star have agreed to pay the ransom," said Dary.

Okaz said that Dary had been involved in the negotiations between the owners of the tanker, Somali mediators and representatives of the pirates, who had been demanding 25 million dollars for its release.

He did not specify the value of the ransom that was finally agreed on. The captain of the hijacked Saudi Sirius Star oil tanker has told Asharq Al-Awsat that the members of the crew are fine and are "being treated well under the present circumstances."

Marek Nishky, a Polish national, spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat for the first time during a four-minute telephone conversation about the situation on board the oil tanker. He said, 'I believe that there are ongoing negotiations. We do not have much information given the current circumstances- everybody is well and none of us are ill. We have enough to food and water and I hope there will be a happy ending to this story."

In response to whether the hijackers had allowed the crew to speak to members of their families, Nishky said, "Yes we are allowed to speak to our families on the phone." He refused to reveal the names of his wife and children.

"In light of the situation, things are not bad and we have nothing to complain about," said Nishky. He explained that the crew consisted of 25 members.

President of Djibouti Ismail Omer Guellah held bilateral talks with his Yemeni counterpart, Abdullah Ali Saleh one day after the Yemeni President held talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi calling for coordination on tackling piracy. There were discussions on the future and developments of the Somali crisis. According to the Ethiopian News Agency, Zenawi accused Eritrea of helping Somali pirates and called for the international community to "do more" to tackle piracy.

Upon his return from Yemen, Meles Zenawi said, "By directly and conspicuously supporting extremists in Somalia and exacerbating its woes, Eritrea is responsible for the rampant piracy in the region." "It is of utmost importance that the international community does more in tackling piracy in the Gulf of Aden," he added.

In Iraq, A day after Iraq's interior minister said that all of his officers who had been arrested in a security crackdown were to be released, their status remained unclear.

A senior adviser to the minister, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that some of the ministry detainees had been released and that others would be released.

But the Interior Ministry spokesman, Major General Abdulkarim Khalaf, told the news service Agence France-Presse that all the ministry detainees, reported earlier to be 24 people, were freed.

The ministry officers were arrested over several days in the past week amid rumors that a coup plot or an attack on the ministry building was in the works. In public comments later, Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki denied that the officials were being investigated for plotting a coup but said that the inquiry was continuing.

Officials have delivered conflicting accounts on what possible crimes are being investigated, but some have said the detainees are suspected of supporting terrorist operations and having affiliations with Al Awda, a party related to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, which was banned after the American invasion.

The episode has become a showdown between Maliki, who ordered the committee that has been conducting the investigations, and Interior Minister Jawad al-Bulani, who publicly condemned the accusations, calling them false and politically motivated.

Many Iraqi politicians were surprised by the strong words from Bulani, who had been considered a minor political figure. Several said Bulani, who has been aggressively expanding his secular Iraqi Constitutional Party, had ambitions to become prime minister and was using the situation to bolster his political credentials.

"The minister of the interior is trying to stand against the prime minister," said Qassim Dawoud, an independent Shiite lawmaker. "I do not believe in the stories of a military coup; this is a struggle between two political parties."

The spokesman for the interior ministry said the results of investigation with the detained officers will be announced in 48 hours.

The officers are under investigation and we will announce the outcome in the coming 48 hours," General Abdulkarim Khalaf told Aswat al-Iraq.

Regarding the accusation of being members of the banned Awda return party, Khalaf said these accusations have not been proved yet.

"The officers are not from the interior ministry but from other ministries," he added, giving no more details.

A lawmaker of the parliament’s defense and security committee had said that 35 Iraqi officers were arrested for belonging to al-Awda (return) party, denying any coup attempts.

The return party is one of the banned movements as it is considered an extension to the dissolved Baath party.

In Yemen, Tribal mediators who have been negotiating the release of three German hostages kidnapped in Yemen say the hostages have been set free.

Ahmed Abad Sherif, one of the leading mediators, says the Germans are now at the house of the deputy governor of the Al-Dhala province in southern Yemen.

A second tribal official who was also mediating says the kidnappers released the hostages after the government agreed to their conditions to release some tribesmen in Yemeni prisons.

This mediator, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, says a ransom of $100,000 was paid by the Yemeni government.

The three Germans - an aid worker based in Yemen and her visiting mother and father - were kidnapped by Bani Dhabyan tribesmen in Dhamar province, located about 65 miles south of the capital, San'a.

The German embassy in Yemen has confirmed that three German hostages have been freed by their kidnappers. An embassy spokesperson said they were in good health. The three, a German woman working for a development aid agency, and her visiting parents, were taken hostage during a tourist excursion in south-eastern Sana'a. The German Foreign Ministry in Berlin confirmed the release but refused to give any further details. Earlier in the week Yemeni authorities arrested a large number of tribesmen related to the gunmen holding the three Germans.

In Manama, Bahraini security authorities arrested a group planning a terrorist attack in the country, security source said.

"They were plotting to detonate locally-made explosives containing flammable materials and large amounts of small iron balls," Bahraini new agency quoted the source as saying.

The attack was timed to coincide with Bahrain's national day celebrations, the source said.

All legal procedures were followed and security officials had obtained a permit from the general prosecution for the arrests, the source added. The source said all details regarding the arrest will be announced soon, pledging to face any attempt to harm the security of the country.

In Khartoum, Sudanese government has arrested all the kidnappers of the nine Chinese oil workers which had been abducted last October in southern Kordufan by a group claiming being part of a rebel group in Darfur.

Three Chinese engineers and six other workers employed by the China National Petroleum Corporation in Heglig, South Kordufan, were kidnapped on October 19. The head of the kidnappers, Abu Humaid Ahmed Dannay, who is also a Misseriya, claimed to be the chief of JEM in Kordufan.

Heglig lies near the line separating the former warring parties of north and south Sudan, in the Muglad Basin where most of Sudan’s proven oil reserves are found.

The minister of interior, Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid, told the National Assembly that all the kidnappers were arrested. He also said that they would be brought to trial immediately, but he didn’t elaborate on where and when the arrest happened.

Three Chinese were killed by the kidnappers under unclear conditions following clashes with the Sudanese troops, according to the Chinese authorities. However Sudan dismissed the Chinese allegation but said the kidnappers reacted violently when a helicopter were monitoring their movement.

The head of the kidnappers Dannay said in a first time they were ready to release the 9 Chinese but asked the Chinese companies leave the area.

"We don’t have any material demands. We want Chinese companies to leave the region immediately because they work with the government," he said.

The Chinese oil workers in Sudan are blamed for ignoring local communities and devastating environment.

Las November Sudan and China discussed the protection of the Chinese oil workers in Kordufan and southern Sudan and adopted some secret measures. After a call by the Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi to his Sudanese counterpart Deng Alor asking him to take substantial and effective measures to ensure the safety of Chinese personnel.

In Ankara, thirty-eight people suspected to have connections with al-Qaeda were arrested in security operations three Turkish cities.

The Istanbul security chief said at a press conference that 23 of the detainees were detained in Istanbul.

Security forces said they had arrested 30 suspects.

In London, an Iraqi doctor found guilty of trying to murder hundreds of people in failed car bombings in London and Glasgow faces a life behind bars as he awaits sentencing in London.

Bilal Abdulla, 29, who was born in Britain but raised in Iraq, was also found guilty at Woolwich Crown Court of conspiracy to cause explosions for the failed attacks in June 2007.

During the trial, he admitted he was a "terrorist" but accused the British government of terrorism too for invading Iraq -- and maintained he was not trying to kill or injure anyone.

His co-defendant Mohammed Asha, a 28-year-old Jordanian neurologist, was cleared on both counts.

Asha's lawyers had argued that he would not have fitted in with the alleged attackers because he was too geeky, arguing that Abdulla and another man looked down on him because of his concentration on his work.

After 24 hours and 15 minutes of deliberations, the jury of seven women and five men rejected Abdullah's defense, but found Asha to have known nothing of his friend's plans.

"Bilal Abdulla planned to murder many innocent people when he set out to attack central London," said Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner John McDowell, the head of the force's Counter-Terrorism Command.

"It was more luck than judgment that their repeated attempts to detonate the two car bombs by mobile phone failed."

Abdulla, who is expected to be sentenced at 1000 GMT, showed no reaction as the verdicts were read out.

In court, he had said he felt no hatred towards individuals in Britain, and had initially supported the ousting of Saddam Hussein after the US-led invasion in 2003. But he was shocked by the brutality of coalition forces thereafter.

His lawyer Jim Sturman said after the verdict that Abdulla wanted to "emphasize that these offences were motivated by politics, not religion".

"This is not a case where his intention was driven by religious faith but by his frustration with what he saw as an unjust war," he said outside the court.

Asha, meanwhile, faces deportation to Jordan.

His father Jamil Asha said his family was "extremely happy" with the verdict, telling AFP: "We were 100 percent sure that our son is innocent. I can't express my joy... thank God for this."

Police discovered two Mercedes cars loaded with bombs made of gas cylinders, petrol and nails left outside the Tiger nightclub and a bus stop in a bid to target late-night revelers in London's West End on June 29, 2007.

The devices failed to explode because of faulty connections in mobile phones being used as detonators and the smothering effect of petrol and gas fumes, jurors heard.

The next day a Jeep carrying a similar deadly cargo was crashed into the front of the main terminal at Glasgow airport in an alleged suicide attack. Hundreds of travelers fled in terror after the vehicle caught fire and thick black smoke filled the terminal, although there was no explosion.

Abdulla, who along with Asha worked in the National Health Service, was arrested at the scene after throwing petrol bombs and fighting with police. He tried to escape but was tackled by onlookers.

Asha was arrested hours later as he traveled on a motorway with his wife and young son.

The attacks prompted security services to raise the national terror threat level to "critical", the highest of five levels, on June 30.

Also detained at Glasgow airport was Kafeel Ahmed, the driver of the blazing Jeep, who died a month later from the critical burns he suffered.

His brother Sabeel was found guilty in April of withholding information from police about the failed attacks, and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment.

He was deported to his home country India in May after being released from custody due to the amount of time he had already served in jail.

The only other man charged in connection with the plot -- Indian doctor Mohammed Haneef, who was detained in Australia -- was exonerated by a court.

India’s lower house of parliament approved legislation aimed at creating a federal agency and enacting a tougher legal framework to combat terrorism in response to last month’s attack on Mumbai.

These are part of a national security overhaul in which the authorities are also planning to strengthen coastal patrolling, improve training for anti-terrorism officers and bolster the country’s intelligence agencies.

The two pieces of legislation need to get the approval of the upper house of parliament and the assent of the president before becoming laws.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is under pressure over security failures that allowed militants armed with guns, grenades and bombs to attack 13 sites in India’s financial hub and hold off security forces for almost three days. The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party ran newspaper advertisements after the attacks showing blood splattered on a wall and proclaiming "Weak Government." The Nov. 26-29 assault left 164 people dead and about 300 injured.

The National Investigation Agency Bill seeks to set up a federal probe bureau to investigate and prosecute "offences affecting the sovereignty, security and integrity" of the country. The bill provides for setting up special courts for the quick trial of terror-related offences.

The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Bill aims at speedy investigation, prosecution and trial of cases related to terrorism. It has stringent provisions, including detention of suspects for as many as 180 days instead of the current 90 days.

Anyone in India or in a foreign country who directly or indirectly provides funds for a terrorist act shall be punishable with at least five years imprisonment, which may be extended to life and shall also be liable to fines, according to the unlawful activities bill.

A similar punishment has been provided in the bill for those organizing camps for imparting training in terrorism.

The government has tried to maintain "a fair balance" between fundamental rights and the need for tough provisions to deal with terrorism in the two bills, Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in parliament.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, which says the new laws don’t match their expectation, supported the bills.

The government in New Delhi has blamed "elements" in Pakistan for the Mumbai attacks.

While Pakistan has detained at least 16 suspected militants, including key Lashkar members, it says they won’t be extradited to India and may be tried in Pakistani courts. Pakistan hasn’t said whether they are linked to the Mumbai attacks.

In Paris, France began beefing up security across the country after an unknown group placed dynamite in a Paris department store and threatened more attacks if French troops were not pulled out of Afghanistan.

Police located and made safe the five sticks of dynamite placed in a washroom in the giant Printemps store on Boulevard Haussmann, one of Europe's busiest shopping streets.

The boulevard was cordoned off for several hours while hordes of Christmas shoppers and tourists were evacuated.

A group calling itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front sent a letter to AFP warning of "several bombs" in the upscale store and demanding that France withdraw its 2,600 troops by the end of February.

Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said police reinforcements would be deployed in Paris and major French cities following the discovery of the dynamite.

"I have decided to reinforce security arrangements in Paris and major provincial cities," she told the French Senate, announcing a meeting of police, intelligence and transport chiefs in Paris.

"It is our role to be constantly vigilant, whatever the circumstances," she added later.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon, meanwhile, told journalists there was a "strong terrorist threat to France".

Executives from Printemps Haussmann, which has 2,000 employees and gets about 100,000 customers a day, were due to take part in the midday meeting in Paris along with other store heads.

The dynamite was not attached to a detonator and posed little danger, the minister said.

The letter, which AFP passed on to police, linked the warning to the French deployment in Afghanistan, where NATO and US forces are battling Taliban insurgents alongside government forces.

"Send the message to your president that he must withdraw his troops from our country before the end of February 2009 or else we will take action in your capitalist department stores and this time, without warning," it said.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, in Strasbourg to address the European Parliament, called for vigilance and firmness in the battle against terrorism.

"Vigilance against terrorism is the only possible policy; vigilance because unfortunately anything can happen, and firmness because you cannot compromise with terrorism," he told reporters.

The postmark on the threatening letter showed was sent in northeastern Paris and arrived at AFP.

A French former anti-terrorist judge, who viewed the text, told AFP that the language was not of the kind normally used by Islamist militants, in particular because there were no religious references of any sort.

The judge spoke on condition of anonymity.

French police arrested seven alleged Islamist radicals in Paris, but officials stressed this was not linked to the explosives find.

Shopper Marie-Christine Soulard said she was told that a suspect package had been found in the store after she brought in a Giorgio Armani dress for alterations and that she had to leave immediately.

"There was no panic. It all took place calmly. But I don't know when I will be able to get my dress back," she said.

Lightly-dressed store clerks and sales personnel were rushed out of the multi-storey store and left standing in the biting December cold.

Staff and shoppers said the evacuation was largely carried out calmly, but one witness said there was a brief panic in Printemps' menswear section where some clients attempted to run down ascending escalators.

The store reopened in the afternoon.

Last week, an AFP journalist received a warning from an anonymous caller that a bomb would go off at Printemps, prompting police to order an evacuation for what then proved a false alarm.

In November, an Afghan Taliban leader had warned in a video broadcast on an Arab satellite network of attacks in Paris unless France withdrew its soldiers.

The last major militant attacks on French soil were in 1995 and 1996, when eight people were killed and some 200 injured in a wave of strikes on the Paris metro and tourist sites by Algerian Islamists.

Boulevard Haussmann was also targeted in 1985 and 1986 during attacks on Paris department stores, many of them claimed by Lebanese Hezbollah militants, which left 13 dead and 303 injured.

Printemps and its next-door rival Galeries Lafayette were rocked by successive bomb attacks on December 7, 1985 that injured 43 people.

Sarkozy decided this year to add hundreds of troops to the French contingent serving battling the Taliban in Afghanistan. France's force is now one of the largest there, after the United States, Britain, Canada and Germany.

In Moscow, the number of people injured in an explosion at a southern Moscow market has risen to 13 persons, with 12 of them in hospital, the Moscow police said.

Earlier reports said that the blast, the equivalent of 50 grams of TNT, which occurred at the marketplace near the Prazhskaya metro station, injured nine people, including one child.

A criminal investigation on the charges of hooliganism has been opened into the incident, the police said.

The police are looking for two men suspected of being behind the explosion, the police said.

In Washington, US Vice President Dick Cheney clashed with his successor over the proper role of his office, suggesting Joseph Biden might "diminish" the importance of the vice presidency.

Cheney's pointed remarks were a contrast to the cordial public tone that has prevailed so far as President George W. Bush prepares to hand over power to president-elect Barack Obama on January 20.

The outgoing vice president, whose term ends in a month, rejected criticism from vice-president-elect Biden who had said during the election campaign that Cheney had overstepped his constitutional role.

"If he wants to diminish the office of the vice president, that's obviously his call," Cheney said in an interview with Fox News.

"President-elect Obama will decide what he wants in a vice president and apparently, from the way they're talking about it, he does not expect him to have as consequential a role as I have had during my time."

During a campaign debate, Biden had called Cheney "dangerous" and said he did not understand the legal status of the vice president's office under the Constitution.

Cheney ridiculed Biden's grasp of the law, citing the Delaware senator's comments.

"He also said that the 'all the powers and responsibilities of the executive branch are laid out in Article I of the Constitution,'" Cheney said.

"Well, they're not. Article I of the Constitution is the one on the legislative branch," he said.

"Joe's been chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a member of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate for 36 years, teaches constitutional law back in Delaware, and can't keep straight which article of the Constitution provides for the legislature and which provides for the executive so I think I'd write that off as campaign rhetoric," Cheney said.

"I don't take it seriously."

Asked if he had advice for Biden, Cheney said: "Well, he hasn't asked for any, so I won't go beyond where I've been," Cheney said.

Biden meanwhile said in an interview with ABC television that he stood by his criticisms of the vice president's performance as well as Cheney's expansive view of presidential authority.

The advice Cheney has given Bush "has been not healthy for our foreign policy, not healthy for our national security, and it has not been consistent with our constitution, in my view," Biden said.

Cheney's interpretation of the president's legal powers during wartime is "dead wrong," Biden said.

"I think it was mistaken. I think that it caused this administration in adopting that notion to overstep its constitutional bounds, but at a minimum to weaken our standing the world and weaken our security. I stand by that, that judgment."

Biden, who has called for scaling back the vice presidency, said: "I think we should restore the balance here."

His job would be "to give the president of the United States the best, sagest, most accurate, most insightful advice and recommendations" he can provide, Biden said.

Biden also would not say if the next administration would seek to prosecute Cheney or other members of the Bush team for abuses of detainees held in Iraq or at the prison in Guantanamo Bay.

The decision to prosecute would be up to the Justice Department.

Obama and members of the incoming administration "are not ... thinking about the past," he said. "We're focusing on the future."

Biden added: "I'm not ruling it in and not ruling it out."

The United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution authorizing the use of force to curb the rising criminality in lawless Somalia, the UN public information office said.

In a press statement, the 15-member Council unanimously adopted United States-led Resolution 1851 (2008) and a December 9 letter from Somalia's Transitional Federal Government to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon seeking international assistance to counter the surge in piracy and armed robbery.

The resolution allows that for the next year, states and regional organizations fighting against piracy and armed robbery at sea off Somalia's coast to undertake all measures "appropriate in Somalia" to stop those using the Somali territory to plan, facilitate or undertake such acts.

Somalia, which has had no functioning government since 1991, has been the pirates' base of operations.

The resolution, which is not yet available, comes in a series of UN resolutions escalating in the recommended actions against the pirates, who have grown more brazen in their attacks, including the hijack of the oil-laden Saudi supertanker Sirius Star.

The Council stressed that the resolution did not establish customary international law.

In reaction to the resolution, Ban said the most appropriate response to the complex security challenges in Somalia was a multinational force, rather than a typical peacekeeping operation.

Somali pirates dodged foreign navies and hijacked two more vessels, officials said, as international experts sought ways to secure international shipping routes.

Somali pirates hijacked two Yemeni fishing boats near the port of Aden, although seven fishermen managed to escape on a smaller boat, maritime officials said.

At least 17 ships are now held by Somali pirates, including an arms-laden Ukrainian cargo vessel and a Saudi-owned supertanker carrying 2 million barrels of crude oil.

Addressing the conference, the UN's top envoy for Somalia called for tough measures against pirates and their backers, and urged greater international commitment to stabilizing the country.

"This unprecedented rise in piracy is threatening the very freedom and safety of maritime trade routes, affecting not only Somalia and the region, but also a large percentage of world trade," said Ahmedou Ould Abdullah. "They may have collected over $120 million for this year, with total impunity," he told some 140 delegates from 45 countries.

With the vital shipping lane to Europe under threat, Western powers have deployed warships but so far been outwitted by the pirates in their speedboats.

Gathered in Nairobi, representatives of governments and agencies explored ways of removing some legal obstacles to tougher anti-piracy action.

Piracy "poses an enormous challenge to the international legal system," UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia Mark Bowden said at Wednesday's opening of the conference.

Technical experts discussed a document by the Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to encourage countries in the region to detain, transfer and prosecute pirates.

The $1.3 million program will boost the criminal-justice and law-enforcement systems of Kenya, Djibouti, Yemen and Tanzania over a six-month period to prepare them to try the pirates.

"If pirates are to be brought to justice, neighboring states - where legal instruments ... are already in place - must be engaged," said the document.

Britain and Kenya signed their own memorandum of understanding on piracy cooperation on the sidelines of the conference while the European Union negotiated a larger deal.

The conference closed with a final declaration containing no groundbreaking new steps but recommending more support to establish an effective Somali coast guard and study common policies on discouraging ransom payments.