JEDDAH, 19 January — The head of Afghanistan’s interim government, Hamid Karzai, arrived here yesterday on his first trip abroad since assuming office last month. The Afghan leader flew to Jeddah in the evening after a refueling stop in Dammam and an earlier brief stopover in Pakistan.

Karzai, accompanied by eight members of his Cabinet — including Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah — "chose Saudi Arabia as his first foreign destination in order to underscore the importance the Afghan leadership attaches to ties with the Kingdom," an Afghan diplomat said.

Karzai was due to perform Umrah in Makkah before heading to Riyadh for talks with Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, today.

The diplomat said talks would focus on "ways of boosting bilateral ties in various fields, the situation in Afghanistan and the Islamic world, and the Afghan government’s plans to rebuild the country after two decades of war."

"We hope Saudi Arabia, which helped the Afghan people during the jihad against Soviet occupation in the 1980s, will keep up its aid during the reconstruction of Afghanistan," he said.

Afghanistan’s fledgling administration is facing a serious cash crunch as well as growing fears the ousted Taleban were alive and regrouping after their rout by US-led forces. With the interim government down to its last $10 million, UN officials lamented that their appeal to the world community had produced no response ahead of a donor conference in Tokyo next week. "It is very disappointing," Ahmed Fawzi, spokesman for UN special envoy to Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi, told reporters in Kabul Thursday. "Reassurance is good. Cash is better."

He spoke just hours after a brief visit to Kabul by US Secretary of State of Colin Powell, who pledged that Washington would do "everything we can" to rebuild the country but gave no specifics. The United States had agreed to unfreeze some $220 million in frozen Afghan assets for the new administration and Japan has pledged $60 million to help Afghan refugees.

Afghan officials, meanwhile, expressed increasing concern over what they said were concentrations of the Taleban militia in the country. The subject came up in Powell’s talks here Thursday.

"They discussed the real threat that the Taleban and Al-Qaeda still pose within Afghanistan," said Omar Samad, spokesman for Foreign Minister Abdullah. "They also expressed concern that in the border areas of Pakistan the Taleban are regrouping under a different name, which could pose a threat to the stability of Afghanistan."

A senior Afghan diplomat in Paris said the defeated militia, still supported by foreign fighters, controlled the mountain areas in southern and southeastern Afghanistan and had adopted a new guise to avoid capture. "The Taleban have taken to the mountains and some of them have just changed their appearance. ... It is a war situation still," Charge d’Affaires Mehrabuddin Mastan said.

In Sarajevo, the US Embassy said Bosnian authorities have handed over to US custody six Algerians detained in October on suspicion of involvement in terrorism but ordered released this week by a local court. In Washington, a senior official told Reuters the US military planned to quickly move the six to the American Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where Al-Qaeda and Taleban detainees from the war in Afghanistan are being held .

A Bosnian government official said legal procedures had been respected in the case, but a senior UN human rights officer in Bosnia said they had been "trampled over".

Not only had a court ordered their release Thursday but the state’s top human rights body had instructed authorities to prevent four being taken out of the country by force. "It’s very disappointing," Madeleine Rees, head of the Bosnia office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said of the operation. "It violates the rule of law."

British police said they had arrested 17 people this week in an anti-terrorist clampdown and had charged two UK-based Algerians with links to Al-Qaeda. Police in Leicester, central England, said they had arrested four more people, including two women, yesterday, after making 13 arrests on Thursday. The four, aged between 28 and 31, were arrested under the Immigration Act and were being held in custody in Leicestershire, police said.