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Zurich - Two Buddhas blown up by the Taliban in one of their most extreme acts of vandalism are going to be rebuilt.

The 1,800-year-old Buddhas, hewn into a cliff face in the Bamiyan valley in central Afghanistan, were destroyed in April on the grounds that as "idolatrous" sculptures they offended Muslims.

Now a campaign is under way in Switzerland to raise more than Sterling Pounds 1 million to recreate them, first near Zurich and then in Afghanistan.

The campaign has been launched by Paul Bucherer, who runs the Afghanistan Institute and Museum in Bubendorf near Zurich, and Bearnard Weber, a Swiss film maker and founder of New7Wonders.org - an Internet project that invites participants to nominate the seven wonders of the contemporary world.

The two men have assembled an international team of art historians and scientists, which they hope will work alongside Afghan craftsmen to recreate what were once the biggest standing Buddhas in the world.

As a trial run, the team will build a free-standing version of the Buddhas measuring about a third of the size of the originals, which will go on display at the Bubendorf Institute next spring. The team hopes later to build a near-perfect duplicate of the sculpture in Afghanistan using reconstituted local red sandstone in the space where the originals once stood.

The Buddhas were built between AD200 and AD400 by the descendants of Greek artists who came to Afghanistan with Alexander the great - which explains why they wore ancient Hellenic clothing. The larger one was 174 ft high.

Mr. Weber said: "We want to prove that even wilful destruction cannot bring oblivion to that which mankind holds dear. They are among the first representations ever of the Buddha and their destruction was the destruction of the link between Western and Asian culture."

He added: "Obviously we will have to wait until circumstances in Afghanistan have changed before we can rebuild them there, but we will be ready to go ahead within two years, if circumstances allow.

The team has been offered the use of highly accurate measurements of the Buddhas made in the 1970s by Robert Koska, a Swiss cartographer from Graz University, Austria. It is also using descriptions of the Buddhas written in the 12th and 13th centuries by Chinese pilgrims and Arab geographers.

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