Asia's soccer minnows will get their own tournament after officials yesterday endorsed a plan for some of the world's smallest and poorest nations to meet in a biennial competition.

　　Seventeen countries, ranging from oil-rich Brunei to war-torn Afghanistan, the Himalayan kingdoms of Bhutan and Nepal to the Pacific island of Guam and East Timor - the world's newest country - will be invited to play in the all-expenses-paid AFC Challenge Cup, the Asian Football Confederation said.

　　The competition is designed to encourage the development of players and the game in countries grappling with strife or where small populations have limited their ability to win entry to bigger tournaments.

　　Other teams include Palestine, Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Macau, Mongolia Taiwan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the AFC said.

　　The tournament will be held every two years starting in 2006, and hosting rights would rotate between participating countries, the AFC said, after its executive committee approved the plan at a two-day meeting in Kuala Lumpur that ended yesterday.

　　The AFC would meet the costs of all the teams, it said.

　　Other details of the first tournament would be worked out later. Among other decisions reached at the meeting, the committee agreed to recommend that East Timor, which became an independent country in 2002 after breaking away from decades of Indonesian rule, be accepted as a full member of FIFA, soccer's world organizing body.

　　(Reuters)