"What I really want to do is to wake up the international community to do each and every thing to provide security in the provinces," German Lieutenant General Norbert van Heyst told reporters at his farewell press conference.

Van Heyst is at the end of his six-month command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and will hand over the helm to NATO on Monday.

He said security had to be enforced before some 25,000 election workers could be deployed in the provinces, where Taliban remnants and extremists linked to renegade former premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar have been regrouping.

"So I feel that one of the major efforts of the next upcoming month is really to try to export security from Kabul, this safe haven, into the provinces, that may be a challenge for this country," he said.

"The international community has to make each and every effort to guarantee this security."

He said while efforts to rebuild the Afghan national police force and army were under way, they would not be ready to take charge of security by the June 2004 elections.

Van Heyst said any possible expansion of ISAF beyond its current confines of Kabul "is a political question which has to be answered by politicians".

The United Nations and the Afghan government have been repeatedly rebuffed in their requests for an expansion of the peacekeeping force to the provinces, which remain largely under the sway of warlords and militias with nominal allegiance to President Hamid Karzai.

Van Heyst said ISAF had been successful in ensuring security in Kabul over the past six months of joint German-Dutch command, "but (we) also paid a high price for that".

Four German troops were killed and 29 others injured by a suicide car bomber in the worst ever attack on the force. Another German died in a landmine explosion and 62 Spanish peacekeepers were killed in a plane crash over Turkey while returning home.

The general said attacks had increased outside Kabul, especially in the former Taliban heartland in the east and southeast which he dubbed Afghanistan's "problem areas".

"The basic problem for this country is the reorganisation of the Taliban and the Hek (Hekmatyar) guys," he said.

Some 20 months after the fall of the Taliban, remnants of the militia and their al-Qaeda allies continue to launch regular attacks on foreign and pro-government troops.

ISAF currently has around 4,600 troops from 15 NATO states and 15 non-NATO states. With soldiers from NATO nations already dominating the peacekeepers' makeup to the level of 90 percent, Monday's handover is not seen as leading to any major changes.

From August 11 ISAF will be led by Lieutenant General Goetz Gliemeroth, chief of NATO's Joint Command Centre at Heidelberg, Germany, with Canadian Army Major General Andrew Leslie as his deputy.

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