Kyrgyzstan has asked the United Nations for help in resolving its border disputes with neighbouring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the state secretary N. Kasiyev said on Thursday.

He said he had received a positive response. "We have disputes with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. These are not new but arose in the 80s," Kasiyev said referring to the common Soviet past of the three states when borders between them were largely symbolic. He said he was referring to Tajik and Uzbek enclaves -- small islands of land belonging to the neighbouring states but entirely surrounded by Kyrgyz territory. The five countries in the vast Central Asian region continue to suffer from the arbitrary Soviet-era boundaries which left many ethnic groups stranded on the wrong side of borders. The issue caused savage Uzbek-Kyrgyz riots in 1988 and strained ties between the states after the Soviet Union's fall. But Kyrgyzstan is arguably the most vulnerable of the countries bordering Uzbekistan, which has the region's largest population and a relatively strong standing army and airforce. Uzbekistan was accused by another neighbour Kazakhstan recently of erecting border posts without consulting it and of stealthily swallowing up 22,000 hectares of its territory. Kasiyev's statements are a departure from Kyrgyzstan's earlier position that there were no territorial disputes between the neighbours. The countries held inconclusive talks on border delimitation in February this year. Kyrgyzstan shares a 1,300 km (800 mile) border with Uzbekistan, while the Kyrgyz-Tajik border is 990 km long.