The Navy is preparing to send the San Diego-based USS Peleliu on a humanitarian assistance and civic-action mission to several nations in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, officials said.

Last summer, the hospital ship USNS Mercy conducted a four-month goodwill tour to the Pacific Rim, with stops in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia and East Timor.

"We are well under way in planning for an operation this summer that we refer to as Pacific Partnership where we're going to undertake another humanitarian assistance deployment designed to continue to build the relationships upon which security and stability in the region depend," Adm. Gary Roughead, commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, said during remarks at a Surface Navy Association meeting last week in Washington, D.C.

The deployment of the amphibious assault ship Peleliu is being coordinated with several nations and, like the Mercy hospital ship deployment, will be carried out in cooperation with several nongovernmental relief organizations, or NGOs.