MANILA,(insidesomalia.org)- Philippines - French Ambassador to the country Gerard Chesnel said Thursday that he was “very confident” of the resolution of the April 4 hijack of a French-registered cruise ship which included six Filipinos among its crew.

In a chance interview, Chesnel said that the French authorities were directly negotiating with the hijackers, since there was no effective government in Somalia.

He said that since communication had been established between the hijackers and the French authorities on Tuesday, there has been no news about the negotiations.

“This kind of negotiation has to be very secret if it is to be successful, but we are very confident that we will find a way,” he said. “We will do our best to free them.”

Foreign Affairs undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Esteban Conejos said the Philippines would seek the assistance of France because the ship Le Ponant is French registered and of the United States 6th Fleet, which is part of a coalition patrolling the dangerous international waters.

Asked if France would similarly seek the assistance of the US, Chesnel said: “We don’t need that because we have our own force in the Indian Ocean. We have a very, very important presence in the Indian Ocean.”

The French ambassador said his country’s navy patrols 2.5 million square kilometers of its economic zone in the Indian Ocean to prevent poaching and illegal fishing.

“All the space in the Indian Ocean between South Africa and Australia is French because there are lots of small islands which belong to us.

They are uninhabited so there is no independence movement. The only ones we make French are the penguins,” he kidded.

Chesnel noted that Somalia was a non-state colonized by the British in the northern part and by the Italians. “It has not been a very unified country after independence,” he said.

On Tuesday, Conejos announced the hijacking by pirates of a 32-cabin, four-deck yacht that was sailing between Somalia and Yemen last April 4. He said six of the 30 crewmen who were on board at the time were Filipinos; and there were no passengers on board at the time.

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