After protracted negotiations, Somali tribal elders and community leaders from the area where the vessel has been held since June 27 agreed on behalf of the pirates to free the freighter, its cargo and crew within three days, it said.

"Elders and community leaders on behalf of hijackers agreed to release the ship completely intact to go to the Somali port of El Maan within the next three days," the WFP said in a statement.

The agreement reached late on Friday is not an absolute guarantee that the vessel will be freed but after several similar pledges from the pirates resulted in no action, the agency said it was cautiously optimistic.

"We are hopeful that this agreement will facilitate their release," Rene McGuffin, a WFP spokeswoman in Nairobi told AFP.

Under the deal, the 850 tonnes of German- and Japanese-donated rice the MV Semlow is carrying are to be offloaded at El Maan and the ship and its 10-member crew - eight Kenyans, a Tanzanian engineer and a Sri Lankan captain - allowed to return to their home port of Mombasa in Kenya, the WFP said.

"The food consignment would be handed over to the (transitional Somali government) in El Maan to be distributed to communities in central regions of Somalia," it said.

"Community elders and (Somali officials) guaranteed that after the cargo was unloaded, the Semlow would be allowed to travel on without hindrance or threat," the statement said.

Karim Kudrathi of the Motaku shipping company in Mombasa which owns the vessel said he was pleased at the agreement but remained skeptical it would actually be released.

"I am happy, but we have heard this all this time," he told AFP by phone from Mombasa. "When they release them, that's when I'll be very happy."

The hijackers seized the the St Vincent and the Grenadines-registered ship some 300 kilometres (185 miles) northeast of the capital Mogadishu on June 27 and have been demanding a 500,000-dollar (404,000-euro) ransom.

The WFP had repeatedly refused to pay any ransom and negotiations between the hijackers, Somali elders and politicians and foreign diplomats dragged on for weeks without result.

The ship was on its way from Mombasa to Bossaso in Somalia's northeast Puntland region when it fell afoul of the pirates in waters deemed highly unsafe by international agencies.

Both the International Maritime Board (IMB), a division of the International Chamber of Commerce, and the United States have in recent months issued increasingly dire alerts about threats to shipping off the Somali coast.

The IMB said this week that the coast of Somalia, which had seen few attacks for almost two years, has suffered a resurgence of assaults by pirates with guns and grenades, with nine incidents recorded since mid-July.

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