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.

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."

Paris  - Buoyed by Wall Street's strong rebound, French shares on Wednesday continued to make up losses from earlier in the week as rumours swirled that a large French bank was in trouble.

The Paris Bourse's blue-chip CAC 40 was up 0.58 per cent, at 4,055.47, in mid-morning trade, with advancing issues outpacing losers by about three to one.

The French-Belgian bank Dexia, which is to receive an injection of 6.4 billion euros (9.05 billion dollars) from the French, Belgian and Luxembourg governments, led the gainers, up 6.3 per cent to 7.99 euros.

Other financial stocks were faring less well, with insurance giant Axa and the banks BNP Paribas and Societe Generale all on the losing side of the ledger.

Paris, Sep 30 : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said the civil nuclear cooperation agreement between India and France added a new dimension to their strategic partnership.

"Today we have added a new dimension to our strategic partnership by signing an inter-governmental agreement on civil nuclear cooperation," Singh said in a statement after his talks with French President Nicholas Sarkozy during which the landmark nuclear agreement was inked.