National Security Advisor, Brigadier General Joseph Nunoo-Mensah, has called for regional coordination and leadership in developing a comprehensive strategy to address the threat of piracy in West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea current spate of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. He said with a large proportion of the world’s oil and gas resources based in the sub-region, pirates were beginning to find the West African Coast as a fertile ground of their operations. General Nunoo-Mensah was speaking to the Ghanaian Times in response to the current state of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. He said leaders in the region should, as a matter of urgency, convene a summit to discuss their response to the new threat. He said if the present threat was not nipped in the bud, the region, with its abundant resources, could overtake Somalia as the world's number one piracy hotspot. He said there was the need for Ghana to protect her territorial waters from such activities by working in close collaboration with her West African neighbours. Gen. Nunoo-Mensah said that presently the pirates were targeting oil tankers and stealing their cargo, adding that the moment they start to demand ransom for their captives, “then the region will be in real trouble.” In the latest reported attack in Benin a few weeks ago, pirates hijacked a Cyprus-flagged Mattheus I, some 60 nautical miles offshore which has been recorded as one of the furthest offshore grabs in West Africa. A report last month in the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre based in Kuala Lumpur stated that armed pirates were increasing in the Gulf of Guinea. The report said while piracy in West Africa had not risen to the level of the Horn of Africa, there had been about 20 incidents in the Gulf of Guinea this year. Similarly, the London Insurance Markets Joint War Committee recently added the region to its list of high risk areas. The UN Security Council last month deplored the rate of piracy. In a release, the council stated that the secretary-General was to send a UN assessment mission to study the region and explore possible options for UN support.