Brussels - World, European and African leaders are set to gather in Brussels on Thursday for a conference to raise funds for Somalia's fledgling security institutions, as the world struggles to come to grips with the piracy epidemic along the country's coast.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Somalia's President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed are set to address the conference, hosted by the European Union and coordinated with the UN, African Union and League of Arab States, EU officials said Tuesday.

They are to be joined by the head of the EU's executive, Jose Manuel Barroso, and the secretaries general of the League of Arab States and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Amr Moussa and Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu.

The conference follows a UN plea for some 127 million euros (165 million dollars) to support the African Union's peacekeeping mission in Somalia and Somalia's own security and police forces, together with some 35 million euros' worth of peacekeeping equipment.

It comes just two days after world piracy watchdog the International Maritime Bureau reported that pirate attacks launched from Somalia in the first three months of this year had increased tenfold compared with the same period in 2008.

In recent months, both the EU and NATO have sent flotillas of warships to Somali waters in a bid to protect aid convoys and merchant shipping passing through the Gulf of Aden.

However, diplomats and military commanders agree that the only way to solve the problem of piracy at sea will be to stabilize Somalia on land by rebuilding its law-enforcement system after almost two decades of anarchy. (dpa)