Rome  - An armed operation to rescue hostages on board an Italian tugboat held by Somali pirates would be too risky, Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini indicated Tuesday.

Frattini discussed the plight of the 16-man crew of the Buccaneer in talks with Somali Prime Minister Umar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke during an international meeting in Rome to discuss the escalating violence in the Horn of Africa nation.

"I confirmed our perplexity over a blitz or armed action to free the Buccaneer," Frattini said, adding that Italy continued to back government-led negotiations to resolve the situation peacefully.

He was referring to the vessel which was seized in April in the pirate-infested waters of the Gulf of Aden.

Any armed rescue action would be complicated because the Buccaneer is being held together with "many dozen" other crews and their vessels, Frattini said.

In contrast, recent successful military mission by the US and France involved the rescue of just "two or three hostages in the hands of just two or three pirates," Frattini said.

Scheduled to end on Wednesday, the two-day Rome meeting by the United Nations-backed International Contact Group of Somalia is the latest devoted to the crisis in the country where the forces loyal to the UN-backed government are battling Islamist militias.

Frattini acknowledged that recent, renewed interest by the international community for the more than decade-long conflict in Somalia was largely due to the "intolerable magnitude of the problem of piracy."

NATO is set to unveil plans to launch a new, long-term warship fleet dedicated to fighting piracy off Somalia.

Meanwhile on land, hundreds of people many of them civilians, have died since early May in fighting in which Hizbul Islam and allied Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab are trying to topple President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.

Still, there are "grounds for cautious optimism, notwithstanding the recent outbursts of violence," Frattini said in a speech on Tuesday that opened the meeting.

"Since the end of January, (Somali capital) Mogadishu has been ruled by a government open to the opposition forces and to all those who have rejected violence and terrorism," he said.

Somalia, a former Italian colony, remains a "top priority" in Italy's international development efforts, with 30 million euros (41.7 million dollars) in humanitarian aid made available over the past three years, Frattini said.(dpa)