DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The International Cricket Council postponed the Champions Trophy tournament in Pakistan on Sunday after teams expressed security concerns and threatened to pull out if the eight-nation competition went ahead.

The ICC board met in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, before announcing the decision to postpone the tournament - the second most important one-day cricket competition after the World Cup - for a year.

South Africa withdrew on Friday, unwilling to travel to Pakistan for the Sept. 12-28 tournament. It had become clear to Pakistani cricket authorities that Australia, England, New Zealand and the West Indies would also pull out if the tournament went ahead.

ICC President David Morgan said it would now be played next year.

"There was unanimity of the decision to postpone the event until October next year," Morgan told Britain's Sky Sports News.

India had thrown its weight behind Pakistan hosting the tournament next month, but Morgan said it supported the postponement.

"India were quite influential in persuading some other nations that that was the right course of action," Morgan said.

Pakistan is fighting Taliban and al-Qaida militants in its northwestern tribal regions bordering Afghanistan and has endured a string of suicide bomb attacks in the last year which have killed more than 1,000 people. Last week there were two suicide bombings which left 95 people dead.

Morgan paid tribute to the Pakistan Cricket Board.

"The PCB have been extremely reasonable about the whole subject, they have worked jolly hard to try to give comfort to the member boards, and the eight teams that are touring, that it would be safe and secure," Morgan said. "Unfortunately, five of the participating nations found it impossible to send their team to Pakistan because of safety concerns."

Plans to move the tournament to Sri Lanka, which has its own security concerns, were prevented by Pakistan's insistence that the tournament should be postponed, not moved.

The latest decision means that only about 18 months will lapse between the 2009 ICC Champions Trophy and the next World Cup, due to be held in four south Asian nations in 2010.

The ICC had maintained the Champions Trophy would not be moved, although a decision was taken to drop Rawalpindi, the scene of last year's assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and stage matches only in Lahore and Karachi.

Pakistan appointed a special task force to oversee security during the event, but that was not sufficient for several teams.