BISHKEK, April 18 (RIA Novosti) - Kyrgyzstan's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that a U.S. envoy's invitation for the ex-Soviet republic to sign up for an international debt relief program amounted to interference in its domestic affairs.

The ministry called on U.S. Ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch to "refrain from public comments bordering on interference in Kyrgyzstan's internal affairs" after she suggested it join the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, a program aimed at relieving debts of the world's poorest nations.

The statement came a day after Yovanovitch said in a media interview that Kyrgyzstan, which owes $2 billion to international creditors, would benefit from joining the HIPC, a program run by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

She said the IMF and the World Bank could write off at least US$900 million in debt if Kyrgyzstan agreed to channel the money into poverty reduction projects.

"Considering that the annual budget of Kyrgyzstan is US$350 million, I think this is a program that ... Kyrgyzstan cannot afford not to be a part of," she said.

The Kyrgyz ministry said Yovanovitch was wrong in trying to present as positive the experience of the 28 countries that had already joined the program. It said that, according to Harvard University, the UN Trade Commission and other influential organizations, none of the participants had achieved promised economic growth, but that they had all remained raw material suppliers for industrialized nations.

Participation in the HIPC would damage Kyrgyzstan's international image, the ministry said.

The country's incumbent government came to power on the back of last March's "tulip revolution" protests, which led to the overthrow of longstanding Soviet-era leader Askar Akayev.

Russia believes the "color revolutions" in Kyrgyzstan and other countries of the former Soviet Union have been heavily sponsored by the West.