Italy will send a political envoy to Somalia in an effort to speed up the release of the crew of an Italian tugboat seized off the African country's northern coast, the Italian foreign ministry said on Friday.
Italy's former foreign undersecretary Margherita Boniver will travel to the east African country as a special envoy of Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.
Boniver is known for her humanitarian work, as she founded the Italian branch of Amnesty International in 1973. Earlier this year, she was sent to Kenya to help negotiate the release of two Roman Catholic nuns kidnapped on the border with Somalia.
Initial reports suggested that the tugboat, the Buccaneer, had been seized by pirates in the Gulf of Aden on April 11. But the authorities from the semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland claimed on Sunday that the boat had been stopped "by local forces" over toxic waste fears.
Frattini has firmly denied that the Buccaneer was carrying toxic waste, and said photos prove that it was empty, as claimed by its owner, the Ravenna-based shipping company Micoperi.
The ship has a crew of 16, including 10 Italians, five Romanians and one Croat.
Source: Xinhua
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