U. S. Navy Vice Admiral William Gortney, who is the commander of the U. S. 5th Fleet, said that the country's imminent deal, in the final stages of negotiations, with an unrevealed country would mark its aggressive approach towards capturing pirates off the Somalia coast.

Gortney said, by next week, he expects the approval a plan whereby suspected pirates will be captured in Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden waters off the Horn of Africa, taken into custody, and delivered to a country in the region for imprisonment and prosecution.

Though Gortney declined to disclose the other country involved, he said at a news conference at the Pentagon: "The State Department is close on finalizing an agreement. We are going to aggressively go after pirates. It's going to be a mixture of surveillance and then rapid action once we observe them."

Under the present rules in force, the sailors only impound weapons found on pirate ships and dump them overboard; letting the offenders go scot-free since there exists no system for their detention. Gortney said "pirate paraphernalia" is mostly inclusive of rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 rifles, and ladders for mounting big ships.

Saying that piracy eventually has to be solved inside Somalia, the Admiral Gortney added that the new rules of engagement will bring about greater effectiveness to his operations to prevent piracy. Under the new plan, his forces will be arresting the "suspected pirates"
- even if they may not be in the act of attacking a ship.