The US is believed to have launched spy satellite that will hover over Afghanistan as part of their attempts to locate Osama bin Laden.
The launch was part of a slowly building diplomatic and military effort to isolate the central Asian nation ahead of possible strikes against the ruling Taliban for its refusal to hand over bin Laden.
The US sent troops to Uzbekistan, Afghanistan's northern neighbor, and won permission from nearby Georgia to use its bases for air strikes should the Taliban not give in.
The moves fuelled speculation that the next act in the crisis was nearing as President Bush assembled the biggest deployment of US forces since the 1991 Gulf War.
If the attacks are launched as expected, they may be guided by information form the spy satellite after its launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
While the US sent 1,000 troops to Uzbekistan, their military value was limited by a dictat from the former Soviet Republic that they could be used only for humanitarian and rescue missions, not attacks.
But Georgia’s President Eduard Shevardnadze, who as Soviet foreign minister urged the withdrawal of Soviet troops from a bloody Afghanistan war, had no such reservations, offering the United States his "full co-operation and full solidarity."
"On my part I will include Georgia's airspace and if need be airfields and other infrastructure as well," he said after meeting with Bush in Washington.
Mr Shevardnadze predicted there would no massive military strikes in the coming war. "If it becomes necessary, I think it will be more local," he told reporters.