Former French minister Jack Lang to become UN piracy adviser

Former French culture minister Jack Lang has been named UN chief Ban Ki-Moon’s special adviser on piracy. “Piracy is a symptom,” he told French radio, insisting that poverty and instability must be tackled in countries like Somalia.

Former culture minister Jack Lang DR

The US’s ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, welcomed Lang's appointment on Wednesday, saying that piracy has “taken on troubling modern form”, especially in Somalia and the Horn of Africa.

In an interview with RFI, Lang said he would soon appraising the situation in the Horn of Africa.

"First, I have to visit the countries involved, and listen to different people to better understand the pirates' reasons and methods," he said, adding that he would then be making proposals to tackle piracy.

Lang is a former professor of international law and an MP for the opposition Socialists. But he has recently worked with President Nicolas Sarkozy, who made him a special envoy to North Korea last year.

Unofficial figures show that 2009 saw the highest-ever number of attacks by Somali pirates, at 200, with over 40 million euros believed to have been paid in ransoms. Piracy has also flourished in the Straits of Malacca between Indonesia and Singapore.

“We have to attack piracy at its source – poverty, instability, the growing presence of Al-Qaeda in south Somalia,” Lang told Europe 1 on Thursday.