The Tajik parliament this week approved a border demarcation agreement that will see Tajikistan cede 1,122 square kilometres (433 square miles) of uninhabited mountainous land to China.

The land in the Pamir Mountains represents 0.78 percent of Tajikistan's total area of 143,000 square kilometres (55,212 square miles).

Tajik Foreign Minister Khamrokhon Zarifi hailed the deal as a "success for Tajik diplomacy", saying China had previously been seeking 28,000 square kilometres of Tajik territory.

Meanwhile Sukhrob Sharipov, head of the the Centre for Strategic Investigation think tank which is attached to the presidential administration, said Tajikistan had solved a major long-term problem.

"If we had not taken the decision to hand over the land to China then we would not have been able to withstand Chinese pressure, given the seriousness of the issue," he told AFP. "Tajikistan minimised its losses in the dispute."

He said that if China had ever shown signs of using military intervention to resolve the issue, then no-one would have come to Dushanbe's aid.

But members of the Islamic and Communist opposition to President Emomali Rakhmon scoffed at the idea of a Tajik diplomatic victory.

"This is a violation of the Tajik constitution which makes it clear that the territory of the state is single and indivisible. It is a defeat for Tajik diplomacy," said Mukhiddin Kabiri, head of the Islamic Revival Party.

Communist leader Shodi Shabdolov told parliament that the government "had left behind a huge problem for our descendants."

The Pamir mountains may be remote but they are rich in gold, uranium and other natural wealth.

China has seized the opportunity to increase its influence in neighbouring Central Asia after the fall of the Soviet Union, seeing the ex-Soviet "stans" as a vast resource for energy and precious metals for its hungry economy.

It has already handed Tajikistan more than a billion dollars in low interest loans for building roads and tunnels and laying electric cable, while Chinese companies are active in the Tajik gold-mining industry.

The territorial dispute arose in the Russian empire under Tsar Alexander III in 1884 amid the "Great Game" for control of Central Asia and continued when Tajikistan was part of the Soviet Union.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei confirmed in Beijing that "the two countries have fully resolved the border question that has been left over from history."

"The resolution of this issue is beneficial to the development of friendly relations and good neighbourliness between China and Tajikistan, to mutual confidence and cooperation," the spokesman added, without giving details.

Tajikistan, a majority-Muslim country which has been wracked by violence blamed on Islamist militants in the last two months, is the poorest state to emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly two decades ago.

It was hit by a devastating civil war between Islamists and backers of Rakhmon that broke out after the collapse of the Soviet Union and only ended in 1997 with the loss of tens of thousands of lives.

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