WASHINGTON -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- The U.S. Navy has moved the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole and other ships to the eastern Mediterranean Sea off Lebanon , Pentagon officials said Thursday . A file image of the USS Cole , which the U.S. Navy moved to the Mediterranean Sea off Lebanon . The deployment comes amid a political standoff over Lebanon 's presidency , but the Navy would not say whether the events are linked . `` It 's a group of ships that will operate in the vicinity for a while and as the ships in our Navy do , the presence is important , '' Adm. Mike Mullen , the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , said Thursday . `` It is n't meant to send any stronger signal than that , '' he said . `` But it does signal that we 're engaged and we are going to be in the vicinity , and that 's a very important part of the world . '' The Cole was badly damaged by an al Qaeda bombing during a port call in Yemen in 2000 , killing 17 sailors . It returned to service in 2002 . The destroyer and two support ships are close to Lebanon but out of visual range of the coast , Pentagon officials said . Another six vessels , led by the amphibious assault ship USS Nassau , are close to Italy and steaming toward the other three , the officials said . Mullen would not say whether the deployment has anything to do with the upcoming Lebanese parliamentary vote on a new president , which was postponed for a 15th time earlier this week . But he said the vote was `` important , '' and Washington was waiting for it to take place . And a Bush administration official told CNN the decision to move ships to the region was a message to neighboringSyria that `` the U.S. is concerned about the situation in Lebanon , and we want to see the situation resolved . '' `` We are sending a clear message for the need for stability , '' said the official , who was not authorized to speak for publication . The ships `` should be there a while , '' the official added . Lebanon 's pro-Western majority in parliament and the pro-Syrian opposition have battled for power over the last three years . The country has been without a president since November , when pro-Syrian leader Emile Lahoud 's term expired and parliament was unable to agree on a replacement . Despite general agreement among the factions to award the post to army chief Gen. Michel Suleiman , disagreements over how to share power in a future Cabinet have kept the issue from coming up for a vote . Parliament speaker Nabih Berri 's office announced Tuesday that the next planned session has been pushed back to March 11 . Berri 's office said the Arab League needed more time to break the deadlock . Lebanon has been wracked by a sometimes-violent power struggle since the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri , whose supporters blamed Damascus for his killing . The resulting outcry eventually drove Syrian forces out of Lebanon , where they had been stationed since the 1970s . E-mail to a friend CNN Correspondent Zain Verjee contributed to this report .