At a joint press conference after the meeting, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, Uzbeki President Islam Karimov and Tajiki President Emomali Rakhmonov said that national stability was the guarantee of regional stability, as the issue of security transcends the national boundary.

The Central Asian countries will make joint efforts together with Russia to take concrete actions to implement the regional security treaty signed last year in Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan, between the four CAEC member countries, and try all they could to stop extreme terrorist forces intruding into the region again.

The four leaders also signed a set of documents and agreed to hold the first CAEC economic meeting in Tashkent in the first half of this year.

The CAEC, which groups Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, was set up in 1998.

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"In 1999 and 2000 Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan were subjected to aggression," he told a news briefing after a summit of the Kazakh, Tajik, Kyrgyz and Uzbek presidents.

"We don't have the right to allow this scenario to be repeated on an even larger scale. The problem has already troubled us for a long time. We are looking for a concrete decision -- on which please allow us not to comment."

The four leaders, whose states are largely secular after decades of Soviet rule, all fear the spread of fundamentalist Islam in the region and blame the threat on Afghanistan, which borders two of their countries and is close to the others.

Afghanistan is largely controlled by the Taleban militia, a purist Islamic movement blamed for funding attacks claiming dozens of lives in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in recent years.

Afghanistan is also the source of huge quantities of opium and heroin, much of which is smuggled across Central Asia and Russia to Western Europe, further undermining regional security.

"The problem of terrorism is the same for us all while Afghanistan is unstable and there isn't a government there which controls the whole country," Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev told the briefing.

TAJIKISTAN REJECTS REFUGEES

Tajikistan stands to lose more than the others from the unrest in Afghanistan.

Reeling from a 1992-97 civil war which wrecked the economy and left it the poorest ex-Soviet state, Tajikistan borders Afghanistan and fears an influx of refugees from the civil war there between the Taleban and opposition Northern Alliance.

Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov said he would not consider letting any Afghan refugees into the country.

"No. Quite simply no. Not one refugee from Afghanistan will be allowed onto the territory of Tajikistan," he said, adding that 4.5 million Afghan refugees were already straining the economies of Pakistan and Iran.

Rakhmonov was equally forthright when asked about Pakistan's application to join the Shanghai Five, a group uniting China and four former Soviet states, including Russia, which border China.

"We're against it -- against any application or wish to join." Pakistan, which borders China in the disputed Kashmir region, is one of only three countries to recognise the Taleban.

Russia attended the Almaty summit as an observer. It too wants to stop the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and has offered Central Asia help.

But Deputy Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Trubnikov said Russia would stop short of using military force against Afghanistan, where the Soviet military got bogged down in a costly decade-long occupation ending in 1989.

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he time has come to think of transforming the Central Asian Economic Community (CAEC) into a regional forum while retaining mutual obligations of the sides.

This statement was made by President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov on Friday in Alma Ata at the summit of the heads of the member-states of the community.

In view of Islam Karimov, the reforming of the Central Asian Economic Community squeezed within the framework of economic problems, will give a possibility to Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to embrace a wider range of urgent issues.

"The most important thing is that in this way we will correspond to a greater extent.

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he next session of the Central Asian Economic Community (CAEC) is expected to be held in April-May this year in the capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent.

This statement was made at a news conference on Friday by President of Tajikistan Emomali Rakhmonov, who chaired the summit of the heads of state of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

According to Emomali Rakhmonov, a meeting in Tashkent will be devoted mostly to the effectiveness of decisions to be adopted by the Central Asian Economic Community.

It is not ruled out that the summit will consider the initiative of the Uzbek side to transform the community into a regional forum, which, in comparison with the previous entity, will significantly widen a range of issues for consideration by the member-states.

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