Somali president offers amnesty to pirates

However, while the pirates have lost ground, the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) still warns that Somalia's waters remain extremely high-risk.

Somalia's president has offered an amnesty to young pirates in a bid to end attacks off the Horn of Africa nation's coast as he seeks to rebuild the war-torn country, he told AFP.

"We have been negotiating with the pirates indirectly through the elders," said President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. "Piracy has to end."

Mohamud, elected by lawmakers six months ago, said that he wanted to offer an "alternative means of earning a living" to young Somalis who have taken up the gun to join pirate gangs.

However, Mohamud said that the amnesty was not open to pirate kingpins -- those who take the vast majority of the profits from the attacks -- some of whom are wanted by Interpol.

"We are not giving them amnesty, the amnesty is for the boys," he said, speaking on Wednesday in an interview at Villa Somalia, the Italian colonial art-deco palace in war-ravaged capital Mogadishu.

Somalia has been battered by conflict since 1991 but a new UN-backed government took power in September, ending eight years of transitional rule by a corruption-riddled administration.

Large parts of the country have been carved up by rival militias who have developed autonomous regions that pay little, if any, heed to the weak central government.

Many of the most notorious pirates, who launched attacks far across the Indian Ocean earning millions of dollars in international ransoms, are based along the northern coastline of the semi-autonomous Puntland region.

The amnesty comes amid a sharp drop in the number of pirate attacks in Somalia, which are at a three-year low, thanks to beefed up naval patrols and teams of armed security guards aboard ships in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

However, while the pirates have lost ground, the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) still warns that Somalia's waters remain extremely high-risk.

Seven boats and 113 hostages are still held by Somali pirates, according to the IMB, while some pirates have turned to land-based kidnapping and banditry instead.

But piracy is only one of many challenges Mohamud faces in seeking to rebuild his devastated nation, with Al-Qaeda linked Shebab insurgents vowing to topple his government.

He plays down an assassination attempt made just two days after his election, noting that "millions of Somalis" died during the country's two-decade civil war.

"There is a time when this (life) has to end," said Mohamud, a relatively small man with a round face, a friendly smile, a small beard and a moustache.

The former professor, who set up Somalia's first private university during the civil war, wants to build up a new state to replace the current one wrecked by war.