Calls mount for solutions to Somalia

"A modest amount of assistance from the world community could do a great deal to help stabilize this government," said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., a leading voice in Congress on Africa. Feingold sent Obama a letter Monday urging him to call Somalia's president and commit to helping establish security.

While U.S. troops "would not be a good idea," Feingold said the U.S. should broker agreements among competing groups and encourage rule of law.

Somalia's government, which came to power after Ethiopia invaded in 2004 and deposed an Islamist regime, doesn't control the capital, Mogadishu, let alone the northern regions from which pirates operate. About 1,000 African Union troops are deployed in Mogadishu, but that didn't stop insurgents from firing mortars at a plane carrying Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., as he was leaving the country Monday. He was unharmed.

Somalia is inundated by an Islamist insurgency that many security experts consider a significantly greater threat to the U.S. and its allies than pirates, said Peter Chalk, an Africa expert at RAND Corp., a think tank. There is no evidence linking the Islamists and the pirates, he said, and piracy plummeted when the Islamists were in power.

Obama didn't mention those issues during his appearance at the White House. As onlookers applauded, the president welcomed the safe return of Capt. Richard Phillips.

Obama said that he was resolved to halting the rise of piracy off the Horn of Africa. "We're going to have to continue to work with our partners to prevent future attacks, we have to continue to be prepared to confront them when they arise, and we have to ensure that those who commit acts of piracy are held accountable for their crimes," he said.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ordered a review of options to address piracy, said his spokesman, Navy Capt. John Kirby.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said piracy will be a top priority. "I think we're going to end up spending a fair amount of time on this in the administration, seeing if there is a way to try and mitigate this problem of piracy," Gates said at the Marine Corps War College in Virginia.

The State Department says the driving force behind the rise in African piracy is Somalia's poverty and lawlessness. An effort by the U.S. military to help stabilize the country ended after 18 Americans died in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, depicted in the film Black Hawk Down.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the U.S. is working "with a number of countries in the region and around the world to help bring some political and economic stability to Somalia." He did not elaborate.

During the past two years, the U.S. has provided Somalia more than $350 million in humanitarian aid and $25 million to build courthouses, and give jobs to teenagers, according to government records.

Chalk said he was concerned about calls to attack pirates on land, such as one issued Monday by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., because "I don't think that really addresses the nub of the issue, which is lack of employment, lack of governance, in Somalia."

In a statement, Webb called for "hot pursuit, attacking and destroying pirate infrastructure at their home bases, and an examination of the extent to which armed security personnel should be used aboard U.S. flag merchant ships."

Contributing: The Associated Press