Nairobi - The world's long-term neglect of conflict-stricken Somalia has created the current boom in piracy in the Gulf of Aden, diplomats and UN officials said Wednesday as the second day of an international conference on piracy began in Nairobi.

"The Somali leadership ... and the international community have neglected Somalia," UN Special Representative for Somalia Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah said. "Piracy is one of the most important consequences of this neglect."

Over 140 delegates from 45 countries - including ambassadors, ministers and technical experts - have gathered in the Kenyan capital to look at how to increase cooperation in fighting Somali pirates, in particular the thorny legal aspects of the issue.

The increase in piracy this year has coincided with a degeneration of the security situation in Somalia, where the Transitional Federal Government is crumbling under a fierce Islamist insurgency.

Ould-Abdallah said 32 vessels had been attacked in the last two months alone, with 12 being successfully seized.

Around 15 ships and 300 crew members are in the hands of pirates, including a Saudi supertanker carrying crude oil worth 100 million dollars and a Ukrainian ship carrying a cargo of 33 tanks and other military equipment.

The surge in piracy has prompted increased patrols along the Somali coast by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia, India and France.

The EU on Tuesday also formally launched operation "Atalanta," a year-long mission relying on up to six warships and two or three maritime patrol aircraft at any one time

However, Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula, opening the conference on behalf of President Mwai Kibaki, said that until the world addressed the root cause of the piracy - insecurity on the ground - no progress would be made.

"If the major powers paid one-tenth of their responsibility to Somalia, compared to the 100 per cent paid to Iraq, Afghanistan or the former Yugoslavia ... we wouldn't be here today," he read from a statement attributed to Kibaki.

Piracy in Somali has its roots in the early 1990s, when illegal fishing trawlers and ships dumping toxic waste took advantage of the collapse of the regime of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 to target Somali waters.

Fishermen began seizing the foreign ships, saying they were defending their coastline. Now piracy in Somalia has morphed into a multimillion-dollar industry, with gunmen commanding huge ransoms for the ships they seize.

Ould-Abdallah said pirates may have made over 120 million dollars from ransoms this year alone.

Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenyan branch of the East African Seafarers' Association, on Tuesday called for dialogue with the pirates to address their grievances.

While delegates at the conference said that the insecurity in Somalia had to be addressed, calls for dialogue with the young gunmen were rejected.

"These other things like illegal fishing and toxic dumping need to be addressed, but it is no excuse for the behaviour of these gangsters," German Ambassador to Kenya Walter Lindner told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on the sidelines of the conference.

Somalia has been embroiled in chaos ever since Barre's ouster, but the crisis has deepened since Ethiopian forces helped kick out a hardline Islamist regime for the last half of 2006, sparking the insurgency.

At least 10,000 civilians have died and over a million have fled since early 2007. The insurgents have made huge gains and are now perched on the edge of Somali capital Mogadishu.

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, in a statement read out at the start of the conference, called for UN peacekeepers to be deployed to help an undermanned and overwhelmed African Union force.

"Somalia has been abandoned by the whole world," the statement said. "It is high time (the world) examines its conscience and comes to rescue Somalia now."