ZURICH (AFP) - The head of football's world governing body Fifa on Friday said that the federation could not get involved in labour issues in any country.

Sepp Blatter was speaking in the wake of claims about alleged abuses against workers involved in construction projects linked to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

But Blatter added that at the same time, Fifa could not ignore the allegations first made in Britain's The Guardian newspaper, which claimed that dozens of expatriate Nepalese workers had died and thousands of others worked in conditions akin to "modern-day slavery" in the Gulf state.

"Fifa cannot interfere with the labour rights of any country, but we cannot ignore them," Blatter said on his Twitter account @SeppBlatter.