Raad buitenlandse zaken dringt bij Ashton aan op diplomatieke samenwerking Afrikaanse landen in bestrijding piraterij (en)

The EU defence ministers meeting in Luxembourg have asked the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, to increase the number of countries with which the EU could sign agreements to try presumed criminals captured by European troops combating piracy in the Indian Ocean.

Kenya, the only country in the region that has had such an agreement with Europe to date, recently announced that it will no longer be holding trials as a result of its legal system being overwhelmed and the lack of EU aid.

Spain's Minister of Defence, Carme Chacón, speaking at a press conference, said the mandate given to the High Representative seeks to get the agreement with Kenya "up and running again", as well as to open up similar avenues with other countries and maintain the agreement with the Seychelles, which receives prisoners but does not try them.

The EU is already holding talks with several of these countries about accepting pirates and Chacón said there are "very good prospects" for finalising such deals with some of them, such as Tanzania. Some of the other countries that the EU will be trying to convince include Mozambique, Uganda and South Africa.

The EU-27 view Operation Atalanta, which managed to reduce the number of ships seized by pirates by 50% in its first year of operations in the region, as a "success". Chacón said the number of kidnappings fell by a further 25% during its second year.

This effort will be complemented from May by a European operation being set up in Uganda to train 2,000 Somali soldiers, who will help the transitional federal government to take control of the situation in the country. This mission will be commanded by Spain's Colonel Ricardo González Elul, with 141 soldiers from 13 European countries, 38 of them Spanish.

The European ministers also examined the situation in Afghanistan during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, with whom they discussed ways of improving cooperation between NATO and the EU-27 in order to prevent any duplication of efforts.

The Spanish minister, whose country holds the Presidency of the EU for the first half of the year, underscored the need to "optimise resources", saying she was confident the training programmes put in place by the international community will make it possible to recruit "up to 171,000 troops" to the Afghan army and a further 130,000 to the police force.

The ministers also agreed to put a programme in place to increase protection for European troops deployed in Afghanistan and other parts of the world against the homemade devices that are often used to attack them.

This initiative, which will be carried out by the European Defence Agency (EDA), will include sending experts to analyse attacks on the ground and to study the best means of preventing these or minimising the damage caused.