"We have to go after the money," Admiral Mark Fitzgerald told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.

Somalis enriched by banditry off the coast are buying up properties in the Kenyan capital Nairobi and in Mombasa, as well as in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, said Fitzgerald, commander of US naval forces in Europe and Africa.

"So it's not a surprise where this money is going," he said.

He said it was unrealistic to expect a stable government in Somalia to emerge any time soon, and that governments should instead organize a joint campaign to crack down on the financiers and the logistical supply network for the pirates.

"I think some progress is being made here but I think we need a more international effort on that," he said.

The cost of skiffs, outboard motors and fuel have "gone up exponentially in countries like Yemen," where the pirates get much of their supplies, he said.

Efforts to track finances need not be US-led, but should be placed under an international "framework," he said, pointing to the United Nations or the European Union.

And he cautioned that countering piracy in the Indian Ocean with naval patrols, like those carried out by the US military and an array of governments, would not ultimately fix the problem.

"We could put fleets of ships out there, we could put a World War II fleet of ships out there and we still wouldn't be able to cover the whole ocean," he said.

"So this problem is not going to go away until we go after the root causes."

The admiral also said the United States had yet to decide the legal fate of five suspected pirates captured earlier this month near the Seychelles.

The men were detained after opening fire from a skiff on the missile-guided frigate USS Nicholas, which returned fire and quickly chased down the small boat.

The US State Department and Justice Department were reviewing the case, including evidence seized by the navy crew and photographs of the skiff firing on the American warship, he said.

Kenya is no longer willing to take into custody pirate suspects detained by international navies off the coast, but US officials were approaching other countries, he added.

Pirates are often detained and then let go days later by foreign navies patrolling the region.

"Catch and release is not a very good option," he said.

The end of the winter monsoon in the region has spurred a fresh spate of attacks by pirates able to venture hundreds of miles (kilometers) from their bases and approach their prey on relatively calm seas.

Armed with AK-47s, GPS navigation and satellite phones, pirates raked in an estimated 60 million dollars in ransoms last year.

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