Pirates captured.

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France's defence minister warned yesterday Paris would not tolerate extortion attempts, after French military secured the release of 30 hostages from a luxury boat off Somalia and seized half a dozen pirates. "This is the first time a country has decided not to let itself be extorted, but also to take matters into its own hands," Herve Morin said on RTL radio, praising French special forces for apprehending the hostage-takers.

He spoke a day after pirates released the 30 crew members of the three-masted yacht Le Ponant, who were taken hostage last week. The operation also saw six hostage-takers arrested in a dramatic raid as they attempted to escape in a 4x4, French officials said. A source close to the negotiations with the pirates said the boat owner paid some $2 millionA to free the hostages, and that a portion of the money was recovered when the six pirates were detained - with French PM Francois Fillon confirming the recovery.

On Friday, the French chief of the general staff, General Jean-Louis Georgelin, said no "public money" had been paid to the kidnappers. Morin added that President Nicolas Sarkozy had ordered that, if possible, the abductors be captured alive. "The president gave an instruction that - if it was possible without any collateral damage - we should try to apprehend the hostage-takers so they can be delivered to justice," Morin said.

The 22 French members of the 30 crew aboard Le Ponant are expected to be brought back to France soon, probably by tomorrow evening, Morin said. A special plane has already left for the French military base in Djibouti to collect them. In Mogadishu, government spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdon praised France for the operation.

"We call on other nations to join the fight against the pirates ... if every government conducts operations like French did, I believe that pirates will never be seen again in Somali waters," Gobdon said. Fillon, speaking in Japan, also called on the UN to launch an "international initiative" to protect maritime shipping in areas where piracy is on the rise.

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