BERLIN -- A little over a year ago the United States launched military action in Afghanistan, hoping that ending the fundamentalist Muslim Taleban regime would deal a major blow to Al-Qaeda in the "war on terrorism".

Today, the FBI believes that many of its "most wanted terrorists", including Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, are still in or very near Afghanistan, having evaded a massive international manhunt.

"There continue to be areas of Afghanistan where there are remnants of Al-Qaeda and the Taleban where work of a military nature needs to continue," David Johnson, U.S. coordinator for Afghanistan, said on Friday. "Something between 75 and 80 percent of the country is pacified," he told reporters. "There remains about 15 or 20 percent of the country where military operations continue to take place."

Nearly 8,000 U.S. soldiers are part of a coalition force in Afghanistan hunting remnants of the ousted Taleban and the Al- Qaeda network blamed for carrying out the September 11 attacks last year on New York and Washington.

The attack on Thursday in Kenya that killed 16 people, which some believe was the work of Al-qaeda, could be the latest sign of the group's deadly reach.

The "war on terrorism" lured the West to fight in Afghanistan. Yet when the world community gathers in the former German capital Bonn on today to discuss Afghanistan's future, the focus will not be on the ongoing fight but on assuring the country's stability in the years to come.

Despite pledges of $4.5 billion from international donors to help rebuild the country over five years, reconstruction efforts are in the earliest stages and life in the country remains difficult and uncertain.

A United Nations force patrols the capital Kabul, but rival regional warlords have stepped into the power vacuum in the countryside, giving rise to widespread perceptions among Afghans that the central government has weakened.

Over two weeks in Bonn last November and December, Afghan officials, guided by the UN and lobbied by the United States, set out a road map for the country's future. It included an interim government headed by then Pashtun tribal leader Hamid Karzai.

On Monday Karzai will travel to Bonn for the follow-up conference that will include regional foreign ministers and Western officials.

German officials say the event is important to make sure the plan leading up to a new constitution and free elections stays on course.

"We have achieved a lot but we must be sure that the process continues," said Volker Stanzel, head of the German Foreign Ministry's Political Section. "There is a danger that the world community will look away from Afghanistan and focus not far away but on another danger."

The UN said on Sunday lack of security was the greatest challenge facing Afghanistan.

"We still don't have a totally stable Afghanistan," UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida Silva told a briefing in Kabul. "If you were to ask me what do you consider as the main issue here, the main issue is still security."

The country also needs money, but officials say the Bonn conference will not pledge new funds.

Washington is hoping, though, that nations at the meeting will forgive Afghanistan's $47 million of debt to international institutions and open the way to significant new loans, Reuters reported.