Presidential spokesman Kanybek Imanaliyev told reporters that the small Central Asian state had only just managed to flush out another armed group which entered the same area in late July.

``The gunmen have kidnapped Major-General Anarbek Shamkeyev, Commander at the Interior Ministry, one soldier and four Japanese specialists,'' he told reporters, adding that the incident had occurred over the weekend.

The Japanese foreign ministry in Tokyo said the four mining engineers, Nobuhisa Nakajima, Hirotaro Fujii, Haruo Harada and Toshiaki Ariie, were in Kyrgyzstan on a survey under the auspices of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Japan's NHK television said they had been sent to Kyrgyzstan in June to conduct surveys on gold and bronze reserves, and that they hadbeen scheduled to stay until November.

Imanaliyev said 85 extra troops had been sent to the area around Zardaly, a village of 120 people located in the remote southern Batken region.

Kyrgyz officials have said they suspect both bands of kidnappers included members of the Tajik Islamic opposition on the run to avoid being absorbed into the Tajik security forces.

The integration process is part of a ceasefire agreement between the opposition and the Moscow-backed secular government which ended a five-year civil war in 1997.