By Daniel Wallis

ADDIS ABABA, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Kenya's crisis must not be allowed to spread like previous African conflicts and should make world powers focus on helping end years of turmoil in neighbouring Somalia, a senior U.N. official said on Friday.

Kenya's sudden slide into riots and ethnic violence that have killed 850 people since a disputed Dec. 27 election has shocked countries used to viewing Nairobi as the peacemaker in regional trouble spots like Sudan and Somalia.

Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of an African Union summit in Ethiopia, the United Nations special representative for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, said the unrest in Kenya had to be contained.

"It must not degenerate and link with Somalia," he said. "And fixing it should help draw the attention of the Security Council to fix the Somali crisis without delay."

Africa had seen plenty of examples of turmoil spreading across borders with disastrous consequences, he said.

"We should avoid what happened in the Great Lakes region, where crises are contagious," said Ould-Abdallah, a former Mauritanian foreign minister who has served as a senior U.N. diplomat in Burundi, West Africa and Sudan.

"We should avoid what happened in West Africa, where a crisis in Liberia contaminated Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Guinea Bissau and so on. And the crisis in Congo which then spread to Burundi, to Rwanda."

AMNESTY FOR SOMALIA?

Somalia, which shares a porous 500 km (300 mile) desert border with Kenya, has not had an effective government since warlords toppled dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991, plunging the country into anarchy and clan-based warfare.

But Ould-Abdallah said he was encouraged by last month's appointment of a more streamlined cabinet by the interim government's new prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein. The last cabinet collapsed in December, torn apart by infighting.

Somalia is due to hold elections late next year, but U.N. officials say restoring stability is a greater concern while Hussein's government faces an Islamist-led insurgency.

Underfunded Africa Union peacekeepers have struggled to contain the violence, and the AU hopes to hand over responsibility for the mission to the United Nations.

Marking the first possible step towards that, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sent a fact-finding team to Somalia and other countries in the region last month.

"We have to be very clear: Somalia has a government that is internationally recognised by the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, the Arab League," Ould-Abdallah said.

"We have to take that into account and give them the stabilisation force they need. It's the responsibility of the international community not to keep abandoning Somalia."

"I think there is no risk in giving Somalia an amnesty or a pardon for past behaviour. You give it to criminals, you give it to everyone. Somalia deserves that pardon." (editing by Elizabeth Piper)

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