US-led soldiers are hunting remnants of the Taleban regime

The Romanian soldiers found about 3,000 107mm rockets, 250,000 rounds of machine-gun ammunition and about one million rounds of small arms ammunition, US military spokesman Colonel Roger King said.

Around 30 anti-tank mines were also found.

The operation was the third such weapons search by the Romanian forces, who usually carry out "force protection" for the coalition base in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, Colonel King was quoted by French news agency AFP as saying.

Around 10,000 US-led troops are currently searching for remnants of Afghanistan's former Taleban regime and Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

Cross-border 'clash'

Operations to contain or capture such fighters have been stepped up in recent months, with eight suspected Taleban fighters killed by US and Afghan fighters in southern Afghanistan earlier in April.

Afghan forces are working with US soldiers

On Friday, Afghan security forces arrested the former head of the Taleban's Vice and Virtue Ministry, Mawlawi Qalamuddin.

It is not clear what charges Mr Qalamuddin - also the former deputy head of the Taleban's much-feared religious police - will face, or where he was arrested.

Meanwhile on Thursday, Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said that border forces had clashed overnight with Pakistani militiamen who, he said, had intruded into the south eastern province of Khost.

Mr Jalali said the encounter took place around the border village of Gulam Khan, south of the town of Khost.

He quoted the local police as saying that Pakistani militiamen penetrated five kilometres (three miles) into Afghanistan before being forced out by Afghan border forces.

Karzai visit

However, Colonel King said that the situation had been more of a "standoff", with only warning shots fired.

"Nobody's engaging in a direct fire fight as far as we've been able to determine," he told the Associated Press news agency.

The incident comes days before a state visit to Pakistan by Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, during which the issue of cross-border security is due to be discussed.

Clashes along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, which critics say was demarcated arbitrarily by the former colonial power, Great Britain, are not uncommon.