Deauville, France  - The European Union will soon deploy a warship fleet tasked with defending commercial vessels from attacks by pirates off the Somali coast, officials said Wednesday.

The move follows reports that pirates took control of a Kenya-bound cargo ship carrying 33 Russian-built T-72 tanks, armoured personnel carriers and munitions and held
20-member crew hostage.

Last week's seizure was only the latest in a growing list of attacks by pirates operating in the Gulf of Aden.

Deauville, France  - European Union defence ministers meeting in France on Wednesday were to consider ending the bloc's military operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, officials said.

"Citizens should know that we can create a mission and terminate it as well," said the meeting's host, French Defence Minister Herve Morin, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

The EUFOR Althea mission was launched in December 2004, tasked with bringing military stability to that former part of Yugoslavia.

At the time it was the EU's biggest ever military operation. Tragedy struck in June, when a Spanish helicopter operating a peacekeeping flight crashed in the hills of central Bosnia, killing all four soldiers aboard.

Brussels  - Environmental groups on Wednesday reacted with outrage to a French proposal weakening planned European Union laws on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) cars should be allowed to emit.

The French government, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, "is giving up any pretence of trying to limit the climate impact of cars," pressure group Greenpeace said in a statement.

The proposal, presented to diplomats on Tuesday, "totally ignores" a vote in the European Parliament and shows that France is "totally out of touch with the needs of citizens who are desperate to reduce their fuel bills," a spokesman for Brussels-based group Transport and Environment (T&E) told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Brussels  - The European Union on Wednesday launched a probe into the five-billion-euro German state aid package granted to troubled bank WestLB, but said that the probe did not necessarily indicate any suspicion of wrongdoing, officials said in a statement.

The EU's executive, the European Commission, has opened "an in- depth investigation into state support measures in favour of the German bank WestLB. This is a first step towards finding a viable long-term solution, in close contact with the German authorities," a statement released in Brussels said.

Paris  - The four European members of the G8 group of leading industrial nations are to meet Saturday in Paris to discuss a European response to the economic crisis, Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker told the French radio station Europe 1 on Wednesday.

In addition to officials from France, Germany, Italy and Britain, European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet and Juncker, as head of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers, will take part in the meeting.

Speaking on France 24 television late Tuesday, the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said Brussels was preparing several measures, "and not only on the European level; something must be done on the global level as well."

Warsaw  - Poland's government signalled Wednesday that European Union officials have refused privatization plans for its ailing shipyards and said it would ask Brussels for an explanation.

Workers at the shipyards on Poland's Baltic coast, birthplace of the Solidarity trade union that helped bring down communism, threatened to hold strikes.

Finance Minister Aleksander Grad's remarks came amid media reports that European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes rejected the Polish plan at a meeting with Grad in Brussels on Tuesday.

Grad stopped short of confirming the reports, but accused Brussels of failing to show good will in solving the dispute - an emotional one the historic connection with Solidarity.