The UAE has set up a body to resolve the cases of thousands of stateless people by registering those without identity papers, an interior ministry official said in remarks published on Wednesday.

'The ministry of interior has already begun preparing registration centres in four emirates - Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah and Ajman - to welcome clients as of next Sunday for two months,' said Major Nasser al-Nuaimi, head of a national committee in charge of the drive.

The ministry did not give any estimate for the number of bidoun, or 'without (nationality)', as stateless people are often called in Arabic, living in the UAE, a federation of seven emirates.

But the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR told Reuters last year that around 10,000 people in the Gulf Arab trade and tourism hub could be expected to benefit from any naturalisation process.

Rights group Refugees International estimates that there are more than 11 million people around the world who have no legal bond of nationality with any state, a status which limits their access to jobs, housing and other benefits.

Children of stateless people are usually born stateless and are often not allowed to benefit from state education and health care.

Nuaimi said interior minister Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al-Nahayan had asked for the issue of bidoun to be resolved 'for good, with more accurate and effective methods so as to preserve the right of eligible persons for naturalisation.'

He said the two-month window was a last chance for stateless persons to register after which there would be a crackdown on people living in the country without residency papers.

There are bidoun living in many parts of the Middle East, where state boundaries were carved out sometimes by Western powers in some cases as late as the 1960s or 1970s.

Thousands of people fell through the net as the region's states were formed and ended up with no legal ties to any state, or were omitted for religious, ethnic or tribal reasons.-Reuters