NATO's new anti-piracy flotilla will leave next month bound for the Horn of Africa where it will join an EU task force already patrolling the region, Germany's defense minister said Friday. Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said Germany will contribute a frigate and a tanker to the six-vessel naval squadron. They will join the EU task force, code-named Operation Atalanta, which is the first naval action undertaken by the bloc. Other nations _ including the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Norway, Denmark and the U.S. _ also have offered their warships to the anti-piracy force known as the Standing NATO Maritime Group I. «Our ships ... will be brought under the Atalanta mandate so that we can contribute to fighting piracy,» Jung said on the sidelines of a two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers in Krakow. He was quoted as saying by Associated Press that the NATO ships would set sail in March. Atalanta anti-piracy patrols were inaugurated in December by the European Union. The EU ships will remain off Somalia's lawless coasts until the end of 2009. A number of warships from other countries, including China, Russia and India, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and the U.S., have all joined the anti-piracy campaign.
