Washington has given $20-million for health and education in Djibouti, a keystone in the US-led campaign against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, the foreign ministry said here yesterday.

Twelve-million dollars will go to expanding primary health care and eight million to improving basic education, a statement said.

Andrew Natsios, the visiting director of the US Agency for International Development (Usaid), which is providing the funds, was set yesterday to meet Djibouti's Foreign Minister Ismael Omar Guelleh.

Usaid has also opened an office in Djibouti.

The US two weeks ago renewed a three-month-old terrorism alert for Djibouti, advising US citizens to reconsider any plans to travel to the tiny Horn of Africa nation.

The renewal was issued by the State Department just ten days after the US embassy in Djibouti alerted Americans to a specific threat to churches and other houses of worship used by the expatriate community here.

Djibouti has an important strategic position at the southern end of the Red Sea and across from the Arabian peninsula in one of the world's most unstable regions.

The former French colony is home to France's biggest overseas military base, with 2 800 soldiers, and is now also a temporary base for some 1 500 US soldiers.

Over the summer months Djibouti cracked down on tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, mainly from neighbouring Somalia and Ethiopia, expelling them for "security reasons".

A high-ranking government official, speaking anonymously, said the expulsions were carried out under pressure from the US-led "anti-terrorist" coalition. – Sapa-AFP.