"We have to be worried by the fact that a regrouping of extremist forces has been observed in Afghanistan recently," Foreign Minister Askar Aitmatov said at a joint news conference with the United States' Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan John O'Keefe.

"The international community should focus its powers above all on successful completion of the anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan," Aitmatov said.

Kyrgyzstan was among a number of ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia which were rocked by armed Afghanistan-based insurgents from 1999 until 2001 when US-led forces intervened, crushing Afghanistan's militant Taliban government.

Kyrygzstan's Manas airbase was used as a launch-pad for the US-led attack on Afghanistan but the ex-Soviet republic has opposed the US-led attack on Iraq, and warned that Manas must not be used for the Iraq war.

Close relations with the United States "do not damage or come at a cost to the interests of other countries," Aitmatov said, apparently referring to increasingly strained relations between the United States and Central Asia's other main power broker Russia, which also has forces in Kyrgyzstan.

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