'Aceh rebels may be behind tugboat attack'

'Aceh rebels may be behind tugboat attack'

Agence France-Presse, Kuala Lumpur/Tokyo

Indonesian separatist rebels may have carried out the armed attack on a Japanese tugboat in the Malacca Strait and the kidnapping of three crewmen, Malaysia's marine police said on Wednesday.

"The pirates are from Indonesia. They may be GAM rebels. I will not rule it out," Mokhtar Othman, operations officer for Malaysia's northern region marine police, told AFP.

Mokhtar said the fact the pirates were well armed and "had something like a rocket launcher" pointed to the involvement of Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebels, who since 1976 have been waging a revolt in the north of Sumatra island.

Marine police commander Abdul Rahman Ahmad, quoted by the national news agency Bernama, said the pirates are believed to have crossed over into Indonesian waters and to be hiding out on an island off north Sumatra.

"The victims have been taken across (to Indonesia) and we believe they are hiding on an island over there," he said.

GAM spokesman Sofyan Daud denied the rebels were behind the attack, saying they had never been involved in piracy in the Malacca Strait. "We are freedom fighters, not pirates," he told AFP by telephone.

The London-based International Maritime Bureau (IMB) has in the past suggested that GAM rebels could be involved in piracy and warned ships to stay clear of Aceh's coast.

The Japanese tugboat was on its way from Indonesia's Batam island to Myanmar on Monday when the pirates kidnapped 56-year- old captain Nobuo Inoue, 50-year-old chief engineer Shunji Kuroda and a Filipino crewman identified by Manila as Sangdang Paliawan, 31.

The tug with its 11 remaining crewmen and the 154 workers on the construction barge it was towing were escorted to Malaysia's Penang island by marine police.

Mokhtar said the crew, the tugboat and barge would be released in the next few days when investigations were completed.

The pirates, who are suspected of planning to make a ransom demand, had not yet communicated with the Japanese ship owners, he said.

The tugboat is owned by a Japanese company, Kondo Kaiji, while the barge is owned by Nippon Steel.

Matsuzaki Tetsuhiko, a Nippon Steel executive director based in Malaysia, told AFP in response to a question about possible ransom negotiations: "The pirates have taken the ship's documents and hence I believe they know the telephone numbers," he said.

Tetsuhiko added that Malaysia had agreed to provide security within its waters for the tug and barge when they resume their journey to Myanmar.

Capt. Pottengal Mukundan, director of the IMB, said in a statement: "The recent upsurge of violence against vessels in the Malacca Strait is a matter of great concern."

The narrow 960-kilometer-long Malacca Strait, bordered by Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, is used by about 50,000 ships a year carrying a third of world trade and half its oil supplies.

The IMB's Piracy Reporting Center, in its report for last year, noted that since late 2003 there had been a steady increase in attacks and kidnappings in the strait and along the Aceh coast.

It said Indonesia accounted for the world's highest number of pirate attacks or attempted attacks with 93 incidents, and 37 more occurred in the strait.

In Tokyo, the Asahi Shimbun reported on Wednesday the Japanese government planned to give Indonesia two or three unarmed, 20- meter long vessels as grant aid in 2006 or later to fight piracy in Malacca Strait.

Japan plans to donate the medium-size ships partly due to fears that large vessels could be used by the Indonesian government to crack down on rebels, the newspaper said without citing sources.