Brussels - International donors gather in Brussels on Thursday to try to help bring stability to civil war-torn Somalia, but the conference risks being overshadowed by rampant piracy off its coast.
The United Nations, whose chief Ban Ki-moon will attend, hopes to collect $260m to back the peacekeeping mission there and rebuild the Horn of Africa country's security forces, according to an EU official.
But as the economic crisis bites and with Islamic sharia law likely to be introduced in chaotic Somalia - where poverty and hostage-taking is rampant - it remains to be seen whether the pledges will be lived up to.
While the conference is not focused on piracy, the high media-profile of the growing cases of daring raids on freighters on the seas of the Gulf of Aden could distract attention from some of Somalia's real needs.
"We've always said that the problems of Somalia deserve the support of the international community. Everything that is happening there is the consequence of the lack of a state," said the African Union envoy to Brussels.
"We need financial means and political support. We have to bolster the transition government and the world must take an interest in Somalia, not just when there is piracy, which is nothing but a product of the situation," said Ambassador Mahamat Saleh Annadif.
Ground operation
Despite international naval missions - including from Nato and the European Union - piracy has spiralled over the last year, as ransom-hunting Somalis tackle ever-bigger and more distant prizes in a major world shipping lane.
More than 130 merchant ships were attacked in the region last year, an increase of more than 200% in 2007, according to the International Maritime Bureau.
Naval officers concede that hundreds of warships would be needed to effectively patrol around a million square kilometres of waters and that the only way to really halt piracy would be to launch some ground operation.
But there is no appetite for such an enterprise, given United States troops losses there in 1993.
According to the spokesperson for EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel, who will also take part in Thursday's meeting, Somalia's woes and piracy are "two things linked together".
"There won't be any solution at sea without a solution on the ground," said the spokesperson, John Clancy, noting that piracy "is a result of the decay of the Somali state".
More and more clans are trying to seek a living on the high seas - one of the few risky ways to make serious money in poverty-stricken Somalia, where Islamists have been waging a civil war since 1991.
However, bringing any political order remains an enormous challenge.
The transitional government has little real power, and none reaching into the north, which is divided between the Puntland region and the "republic" of Somaliland.
And since the Ethiopian army pulled out in December, the only security presence supporting the government is the African AMISOM peacekeeping mission.
The 3 500-troop force - with soldiers mainly from Uganda and Burundi - is well short of the 8 000 soldiers initially planned and is regularly attacked by the Islamist Shehab militia.
Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, African Commission chief Jean Ping, Arab League head Amr Mussa and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana are expected at the conference, along with representatives from some 30 nations.
