NAIROBI, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Officials of a breakaway enclave of wartorn Somalia have asked the international community to help safeguard its marine resources from poachers and human traffickers.

"We urge the international community to authorise one of its member nations to protect Somali coastal areas," Awad Ashara, minister of justice and human rights of breakaway Puntland told Reuters. Puntland lies in the north of the fractured country of Somalia and borders another breakaway region, Somaliland.

"We would like the United Nations or the African Union to pass a resolution enabling Somalia's waters to be protected until there is a government in Somalia," he said.

"We are afraid of dumping and the use of fishing nets that have very small holes," Ashara said. "They are damaging the bottom of the sea and destroying the marine species and fertilisation of fish (eggs)."

Ashara said vessels from Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan and Yemen were the main culprits.

The ships enter Somali waters at great peril. The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) says Somali waters are the world's most dangerous and says a ship would almost certainly be attacked by pirates if it strayed too close to the coast.

Somalia collapsed into chaos in 1991 after the ousting of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. Peace talks have failed to agree on a successor administration to a transitional national government (TNG) whose three-year mandate expired last month.

Leaders of Puntland, as well as other rival factions have been holding stuttering peace talks in Kenya aimed at ending a decade of anarchy in the country.