Dhaka - Dhaka on Saturday made a formal request to the United Nations for assistance to rescue two Bangladeshi development workers abducted in war-torn Afghanistan last month.

"We have sought assistance from the United Nations to rescue abducted Bangladeshi workers," the foreign affairs adviser, Fakhruddin Ahmed, told reporters after the talks with visiting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Unknown gunmen on October 23 kidnapped two Bangladeshi development workers - Akhter Ali and Mohammad Shahjahan Ali - who were looking after operations of non-governmental Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) in Afghanistan.

"We requested the Secretary-General for more efforts so that we can bring our nationals back home," Iftekhar said.

While talking to the media after the talks, Ban who is now in Dhaka on a two-day visit, termed the meeting fruitful, but he did not mention anything about the Bangladeshi request for its abducted nationals.

The authorities in Kabul and the United Nations have been trying to rescue the two BRAC officials who were abducted from their office in Moi Mubarak of central Afghanistan province of Ghazni.

The BRAC officials in Bangladesh last week requested Bangladesh government to seek international assistance for the rescue of its officials.

BRAC has been operating in Ghazni, one of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, for three years with micro-credit programmes in the fields of education, health and welfare.

In September 2007, gunmen killed BRAC official Abdul Alim. Three days later, another BRAC executive, Nurul Islam, was kidnapped, but released after 83 days. (dpa)