The leader of a group of rebels claiming to control the Uzbek border town of Korasuv said he and his supporters intend to build an Islamic state and are ready to fight if government troops attempt to crush their revolt.

``We will be building an Islamic state here in accordance with the Koran,'' said Bakhtiyor Rakhimov Wednesday from the back of a horse.

``People are tired of slavery.''

His assistant Arab-Polvon Badanboyev, 50, said they have the support of 5,000 activists in the town of about 20,000, and there was no sign of any government officials.

But Uzbek Interior Minister Zakir Almatov shrugged off militant claims. ``It's all sheer nonsense, everything is normal there,'' he said when asked if the government was going to move against Korasuv.

The uprising in Korasuv, which adjoins Kyrgyzstan, began Saturday, a day after government troops violently crushed a protest in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan.

Protesters in Korasuv, 30 kilometers from Andijan, set fire to a police headquarters, a tax office and several traffic police posts. They also looted several other government buildings.

Police and local officials fled the town after several of them were beaten.

President Islam Karimov blamed the unrest in Andijan on extremist Islamic groups seeking to overthrow his secular government and create an Islamic state.

At the Andijan protest, only social and economic demands could be heard as speaker after speaker complained about stark poverty and widespread unemployment and the government's stifling of private business. They denied having any Islamic agenda.

But observers of the impoverished Central Asia region have long feared that any social unrest could be used by Islamic groups to promote their goals.

Karimov's government has been struggling with fundamentalist Islamic groups since the nation of close to 25 million gained independence with the 1991 Soviet collapse.

One of the triggers of the uprising in Korasuv was the authorities' closure of the border with Kyrgyzstan two years ago. After Saturday's revolt, town residents restored the bridge spanning a river separating the countries.

``We will work in the fields, we will open the borders with Kyrgyzstan and reach Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the rest of the world,'' Rakhimov went on, reflecting a central idea of most radical groups active in the region.

``All decisions will be taken by people at a mosque. There will be rule of Shariah law. Thieves and other criminals will be tried by the people.''

Among the groups that promote such ideas, the one that probably has the most followers in formerly Soviet Central Asia is the Hizb-ut-Tarir party, which authorities accuse of inspiring terror attacks in the capital, Tashkent, and the central city of Bukhara last year that killed more than 50.

Hizb-ut-Tahrir claims to reject violence and denied responsibility.

Rakhimov said he and his supporters did not belong to any specific Islamic organization. ``We're just people,'' he said. ``We just follow the Koran.''

On soldiers regaining control of Korasuv by force, as in Andijan, he said: ``They came here today, a few military people. I turned them back.''