PESHAWAR, Sept 7: Speakers at an international conference on Monday called for conducting research for the sustainability of communities in the remote Hindu Kush mountain range.

The three-day conference on 'Sustainability of Communities in Remote Environments: Hindu Kush, Pakistan' was organised by the Department of Archaeology and Museums, NWFP, and the University of Glasgow, UK, at the Summer Camp of the Peshawar University in Baragali.

Archeologists from Pakistan, the US, the UK, Denmark and Italy are attending the conference, which is expected to last till Wednesday. Prof Peter Meadows from the Glasgow University, one of the organizers, said that the issue of biodiversity in the Hindu Kush region was of global importance, adding that it was a habitat for various endangered species.

"The Hindu Kush region ... has a high social, political and geographical significance," Prof Meadow said. The director Archaeology and Museums, Dr Ihsan Ali, said that 12 archaeological sites dating back to 10,000BC and 40,000BC had been discovered in Bajaur and Mohmand agencies during the past one and a half years.

The NWFP Chief Secretary, Ejaz Ahmad Qureshi, said that the Hindu Kush region offered a lot of research opportunities for scholars in antiquities. The secretary Archaeology and Culture, Amjad Nazir, also highlighted the geographical significance of Hindu Kush and said it was a major mountain system of Central Asia, which extended southwards for about a 1,000kms from the Pamirs on the border of Afghanistan, the NWFP and Tajikistan, adding that it had a peculiar geographical and geological formation with a rich cultural heritage.