www.timesoneline.co.uk An elaborate laser show plans to "recreate" Afghanistan's famous Bamiyan Buddhas, the towering, 1,600-year-old statues destroyed by the Taliban amid international outrage in 2001.

The life-size, lurid images will be projected on to the clay cliff faces of the Bamiyan Valley where the archaeological treasures originally stood on the Silk Road linking Europe and Central Asia. Some 140 "statues" will make up the installation, due to premiere in June 2007, subject to approval by Unesco, the United Nations cultural organisation.

Hiro Yamagata, a Japanese-born artist based in California, wants to use wind and solar power to project the images on to four miles of the cliffs in the central Hindu Kush Mountains about 90 miles from Kabul. His project is supported by the Afghan government.

Unesco, which has a prominent presence in Bamiyan, where it has been evaluating methods of preserving mural paintings in man-made caves surrounding the Buddha sites, must ascertain whether the laser beams could damage the cliffs.

Carved into the mountainside, the two Buddhas were of international cultural significance. The larger of the two was, at 175ft, thought to be the world's tallest standing Buddha. The smaller stretched to 115ft and both were sheltered by giant niches hollowed from the rock.

The statues escaped damage during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the country's bitter civil war in the 1990s but in 2001 the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar gave the order to destroy the figures, despite Unesco's declaration that the act would be "a crime against culture". In March, militants used dynamite and artillery to blow up the fifth-century statues. The fundamentalist group considered the Buddhas idolatrous and anti-Muslim. All that remains today is rubble and the cavities in the cliff.

The demolition triggered demands for either the rebuilding of the statues or some kind of commemoration at the location, a site of pilgrimage for centuries because of its Buddhist monastic complex that flourished from the second to the eighth centuries. A Swiss plan to rebuild the Buddhas at أ‚آ£16 million a statue was abandoned.

Mr Yamagata's أ‚آ£5 million installation will feature 14 laser systems casting overlapping, faceless images up to 175ft tall on to the cliffs for four hours every Sunday.

The projections, in neon shades of green, pink, orange, white and blue, will morph constantly into different colours and patterns, forming a stark contrast to the impoverished rural valley below.

"I'm doing a fine art piece. That's my purpose - not for human rights, or for supporting religion or a political statement," said Mr Yamagata, 58, whose other laser works include a recent display at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

He plans to ship 140 4,000-kilowatt windmills to Afghanistan and use about 100 of them to provide power for surrounding villages without electricity. He also hopes to recruit local men to dig foundations for the windmills, starting next March.

Mr Yamagata said he had already secured some sponsorship from Mercedes-Benz and will choose a windmill company in December.

Habiba Sarobi, provincial governor in Bamiyan, welcomed the project providing it had no environmental impact.