KABUL Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai asked the international community on Monday to help his war-shattered country restore its cultural heritage, damaged and looted during more than two decades of conflict.

At a kabul seminar, Karzai described the destruction last year by the former ruling Taleban of ancient giant Buddhas in Bamiyan as "irreparable".

"I hope the scholars and the lovers of culture make precious decisions (on) how to preserve and revitalize the cultural heritage of Afghanistan," he told the seminar organized by UNESCO, the UN's cultural and educational body.

UNESCO Director General, Koichiro Matsuura, in a message to the meeting, said Afghanistan was the living testimony of over two thousand years of history and the expression of many different peoples, cultures and beliefs.

The three-day seminar is expected to propose rebuilding some key historical sites in afghanistan, a country long at the crossroads of Asian, European and Middle Eastern cultures along the famed silk road.

The projects, estimated to cost nearly $5 million, include rebuilding the two Bamiyan Buddhas -- 53 and 38 meters (170 and 125 feet high) -- the restoration of the Kabul museum and the preservation of famous Islamic minarets such as the one in jam, in rugged mountains in western Ghor Province.

UNESCO says the 12th-century Jam Minaret, at 190 feet the second tallest in the world, would be added to its world heritage list in June.

The body would also try to acquire and return important Afghan antiquities and other objects now in foreign museums, Reuters reported.

Afghanistan's cultural heritage is regarded as one of the world's richest. Nestling between Iran, the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia, it sits astride a key trade route that proved irresistible to a succession of foreign armies.

Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the warring hordes of Genghis Khan in 1219 were just two of the many invaders who stamped their identity on the country.