Turkey To Deploy Warship Off Somalia - Minister

`In the first stage, the plan is to send one warship`, Babacan told a news conference.

Turkey will deploy a warship as part of a United Nations-led force off the Somali coast to prevent pirates hijacking its ships, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said on Friday.

The government presented to parliament on Thursday a memorandum to allow Turkey to deploy naval forces in the region, where more than a dozen ships with links to NATO-member Turkey have been among the many vessels hijacked by pirates.

"In the first stage, the plan is to send one warship," Babacan told a news conference.

Turkish TV quoted the army general staff as saying the navy was working on sending the warship to Somalia this month.

State-run Anatolian news agency said the memorandum envisaged a one-year limit for the deployment in the Gulf of Aden and off the Somali coast.

The memorandum said the threat to Turkey's commercial vessels had reached a dimension where it damages the country's trade and economic interests. It said there had been nearly 500 incidents of piracy and armed robbery in the maritime region.

Some 15 ships with links to Turkey have been hijacked, along with more than 300 crew, of which 37 were Turkish.

Piracy in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean shipping lanes has sent insurance prices soaring, forced some owners to decide to go around South Africa instead of through the Suez Canal, and brought an unprecedented deployment of foreign warships to the region.

Two Turkish ships hijacked last year were released by Somali pirates last month.