By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - France, the United States andBritain are drafting a U.N. Security Council RESOLUTION(RSL.LO)thatwould authorize countries to fight piracy off Somalia andelsewhere, France's U.N. envoy said on Tuesday.
A surge in maritime hijackings for ransom in the waters offthe coast of lawless Somalia have made it one of the world'smost dangerous shipping zones.
"We French and the Americans, with the support of theBritish and others, want to have a resolution on piracy,"French Ambassador to the United Nations Jean-Maurice Riperttold Reuters.
"We are in the process of agreeing among ourselves the(details) of the resolution, including the scope and the legalaspects," he said.
Somali pirates hijacked a ship en route from Dubai onMonday and Spain said it had sent a naval frigate after theseizure of a Spanish tuna fishing boat with 26 people aboardoff Somalia.
The attackers appear undeterred by the arrest by Frenchtroops in the desert last week of six Somali pirates who hadseized a French luxury yacht and held its crew hostage for aweek. They were flown to France for questioning.
Ripert said there were complicated legal issues involved inpreparing the resolution, but he said it was possible theymight have a draft ready by the end of this week.
"The idea is to give a mandate, to call on states of theU.N. to tackle piracy by organizing patrols, reacting to actsof piracy, to take as many preventative measures as possible,"Ripert said.
"We really are keen on not doing anything that couldendanger the ... law of the sea," he said.
Somalia has been without an effective central governmentsince the 1991 toppling of a military dictator, allowinganarchy and violence to flourish.
Kidnapping and piracy are lucrative businesses and mostSomalis treat their captives well in anticipation of a ransom.
Ripert made it clear that the idea is that U.N. memberstates -- not the United Nations itself -- would join forcesand root out piracy before it happens with stepped-upmonitoring and patrols.
"It would not be the U.N. organizing it, but authorizingit, asking for it, giving the mandate to the member states todo that and to do it collectively as much as possible," hesaid.
Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. mission to theUnited Nations, said, "We think it is a very important issue,we want to move it forward as soon as possible.
"With recent events, it is critical that the SecurityCouncil looks at this immediately," he added.
(Editing by Sandra Maler)