By Andrew Gray

MANAMA, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Shipping firms should use armed security guards much more to protect their vessels against pirates off Somalia, the top U.S. Navy commander charged with tackling the problem said on Friday.

Vice Admiral Bill Gortney said more cooperation between navies, a legal basis for detaining and trying pirates and stabilising Somalia would also help to crackdown on the piracy, which has surged in the region in recent months.

But Gortney expressed scepticism about going after pirates on land or targeting them with air strikes, even though a draft U.N. Security Council resolution drawn up by Washington seeks authority for such actions.

"I see people trying to look for an easy military solution to a problem that demands a non-kinetic solution," Gortney told reporters travelling with visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates at his headquarters in Bahrain.

"If you're going to do kinetic strikes into the pirate camps, the positive ID and the collateral damage concerns cannot be overestimated.

"They're irregulars -- they don't wear uniforms," said Gortney, who commands the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet and oversees a coalition of navies fighting piracy off Somalia.

Gortney said the solution lay in bringing stability to the African state but that would not happen soon. Governments and shipping companies had to look for other answers.

"I'm a firm believer ... (in) armed security guards, because that's what we'd do ashore," he said. "You're working against criminal activity. That's what I'm pushing."

Gortney said some companies were using teams of security guards but others had concerns, including worries about the legality of carrying weapons when they pulled into ports. He said he believed such issues could be overcome.

Scores of attacks in the busy Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean in recent months have pushed up insurance costs, earned Somali pirates tens of millions of dollars in ransom and prompted foreign navies to rush to protect merchant shipping.

A NATO anti-piracy mission in the area is coming to an end but Gortney said he believed the alliance would return and the European Union agreed on Monday to launch naval operations off Somalia involving warships and aircraft.

Gortney said the risk to shipping from Somali pirates was still relatively small

"Statistically from January to the end of November ... just in the area north of Somalia, your chances of getting pirated were 0.14 percent," he said.

But he said even one attack was unacceptable.

"We almost romanticise pirates now as a result of, well, 'Pirates of the Caribbean' (movies) -- I can't get away from it, my miniature schnauzer's name is Captain Jack Sparrow," he said.

"But these are really criminals at sea." (Editing by Elizabeth Piper)

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