WASHINGTON: Somali elders have begun a fresh attempt to resolve the stand-off between the United States Navy and pirates holding an American captain hostage in a lifeboat.
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Somali sources told the BBC that a group of elders had taken to sea to arrange safe passage for the hostage takers.
The pirates have warned the US Navy, which has a warship within sight of the lifeboat, against trying to rescue Captain Richard Phillips by force.
His container ship has arrived with the rest of its crew in Mombasa, Kenya.
Crew members hailed his bravery, saying he offered himself as a hostage in order to save them when the Maersk Alabama was attacked on Wednesday.
US federal agents have been interviewing the crew.
The captain is being held on a lifeboat, said to be drifting about 30 to 45 kilometres off the Somali coast.
Negotiations had earlier broken down, Somali officials said, after US officials insisted the pirates be arrested and a group of elders representing the pirates refused.
Somali officials said the captain and four armed pirates were in a covered lifeboat floating off Gara'ad, a notorious pirate enclave in north-eastern Somalia.
The negotiations broke down hours after the pirates fired on a small US Navy vessel that tried to approach the lifeboat not long after sunrise on Saturday.
It was the first such approach since the tense stand-off began on Wednesday, and the navy vessel returned to the destroyer Bainbridge after the pirates fired warning shots in the air, a US military official said. The US boat did not return fire, the official said.
The pirates, who are demanding $US2 million ($2.8 million) in ransom, seized Captain Phillips on Wednesday and escaped in the lifeboat.
A senior US military official said Captain Phillips was still alive, and the pirates had put him on the phone roughly once a day to prove to negotiators on the Bainbridge that he was safe.
On Saturday a group of elders from Gara'ad, mediating on behalf of the pirates, spoke by satellite phone to US officials, said Abdul Aziz Aw Mahamoud, a district commissioner in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland in north-eastern Somalia.
The elders proposed a deal in which the pirates would release Captain Phillips, with no ransom paid, and the pirates would be allowed to escape.
But Mr Abdul Aziz said the Americans insisted the pirates be handed over to Puntland authorities.
Agencies
