Mogadishu: US warships stalked a drifting lifeboat where Somali pirates were holding their first American hostage on Friday, apparently hoping to win a promise of safe passage in exchange for the captive.

Four pirates have been holding ship's captain Richard Phillips, a former Boston taxi driver, since Wednesday after making a foiled attempt to hijack the 17,000-tonne Maersk Alabama several hundred miles off Somalia in the Indian Ocean.

The ship's lifeboat has run out of fuel, other pirates are too nervous to help them due to the presence of foreign naval ships, and the USS Bainbridge destroyer is up close.

"Other pirates want to come and help their friends, but that would be like sentencing themselves to death," said Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme that monitors the region's seas.

"They will release the captain, I think, maybe today or tomorrow, but in exchange for something. Maybe some payment or compensation, and definitely free passage back home."

Phillips is one of about 270 hostages being held at the moment by Somali pirates, who have been plying the busy sea-lanes of the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean for years.

They are keeping 18 captured vessels at or near lairs on the Somali coast -- five of them taken since the weekend alone.

Yet the fact Phillips is the first U.S. citizen seized, and the drama of his 20-man American crew stopping the Alabama being hijacked on Wednesday, has galvanized world attention.

It has also given President Barack Obama another foreign policy problem in a place most Americans would rather forget.

Perched on the Horn of Africa across from the Middle East, Somalia has suffered 18 years of civil conflict since warlords toppled former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

Americans remember with a shudder the disastrous U.S.-U.N. intervention there soon after, including the infamous "Black Hawk Down" battle in 1993 when 18 U.S. troops were killed in a 17-hour firefight that later inspired a book and a movie.

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Source : Reuters