nato liberators are about to go supply-empty in the place that defeated all empires.
waiting for obama's surging reinforcement, and his top-up us$ check - say 20,000 troops, each entry ticket at so much us$
just in in-tray
nytimes.com
February 5, 2009
Dispute Mounts Over Key U.S. Base
By ELLEN BARRY and MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
MOSCOW — The Kyrgyz Parliament will vote Friday on a measure that will close a key United States military base, potentially jeopardizing NATO supply lines to Afghanistan, the Kyrgyz government said Wednesday.
But American diplomats and military officials in the region said negotiations on the base’s future were continuing.
A Kyrgyz statement released Wednesday argued that the American mission in Afghanistan had outlasted its original goals, saying that the terrorist threat had “been removed,” and that NATO airstrikes in Afghanistan had caused an unacceptable rise in civilian casualties.
President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced the decision to close the facility on Tuesday during a visit to Moscow to seek financial support. The closure would be a victory for Russian leaders, who saw the base as an American attempt to assert control in the region. And by eliminating a vital refueling and transport point for NATO forces, it would present a blunt challenge to President Obama’s highest foreign policy priority: the war in Afghanistan.
In a statement on Wednesday, the United States Embassy in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, said it had not received a formal notification of the decision, and that discussions with Kyrgyz authorities are continuing. If Parliament approves the law, Kyrgyz authorities must give Washington 180 days’ notice before closing the base, according to the original treaty, which was signed in 2001 by Mr. Bakiyev’s predecessor.
The move could disrupt a fragile détente between Moscow and Washington that emerged after President Obama took office. Afghanistan has been seen as a jumping-off point for cooperation between the United States and Russia, which is wary of the spread of Islamic extremism.
“It’s an extremely serious point, because the premise of American policy is that there is a common interest here,” said Stephen Sestanovich, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, which is based in New York. “If they’re trying to tell us otherwise, that message will get through.”
The question of supply lines to NATO and American forces in Afghanistan has become increasingly acute with attacks on the centuries-old route from Pakistan over the Khyber Pass.
On Tuesday, Taliban militants blew up a bridge, forcing the suspension of road shipments. According to The Associated Press on Wednesday, militants then torched 10 trucks stranded in Pakistan as a result of the destruction of the bridge.
The uncertainties surrounding the supply lines have added urgency to American and NATO efforts to secure alternative supply lines through Central Asia.
This is not the first time United States officials have rushed to forestall expulsion from the base at Manas. During negotiations this summer, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. would pay more than $150 million in assistance and compensation for the base this year. At the time, a government statement said the United States had contributed more than $850 million to support democracy, economic development, aid projects and security in the Kyrgyz Republic since its independence from the Soviet Union.
At a news conference in Moscow on Tuesday, Mr. Bakiyev complained about a 2006 incident in which a United States serviceman had shot a Kyrgyz truck driver on the base, and said Washington had also ignored his requests for more money.
“Eight years have passed,” he said. “We have repeatedly raised with the United States the matter of economic compensation for the existence of the base in Kyrgyzstan, but we have not been understood.”
Mr. Bakiyev arrived in Moscow under intense pressure to ease economic troubles in Kyrgyzstan, which is heavily in debt to Russia and dependent on remittances from migrant workers. President Dmitri A. Medvedev said Russia would extend a $2 billion loan and $150 million in aid to Kyrgyzstan.
Andronik Migranyan, an analyst at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation, a Kremlin-backed research group based in New York, said the United States presence in Central Asia was supposed to be temporary. If the American side makes concessions — on missile defense and NATO enlargement, in particular — Russia may be willing to support American aims in Afghanistan, he said.
“This needs to be viewed from a wider context,” said Mr. Migranyan. “The American government is involved in many things that Russia does not like, and this is something of a bargaining chip.”
But others saw it as a blunt projection of Russian power in its neighboring countries — and in the world.
“The fact that a rather little country has decided to take the payoff is intriguing,” said Paul Quinn-Judge, a Central Asia expert with the International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization that seeks to resolve deadly conflicts. “But what is really striking is that the Russians seem to be at this point tightening the screws and trying to get D.C.’s attention in the nastiest possible way.”
Kyrgyzstan’s close relations with the United States have long unsettled Russia and China, which both have military interests in the region.
In 2005, the country appeared to move further into Washington’s orbit after a popular uprising, supported in part by the United States, toppled the corrupt and increasingly authoritarian government of Askar A. Akayev, sending the president fleeing across the border. The bloodless coup was part of a wave of popular revolts, known as colored revolutions, that remain a source of anger and suspicion among Russian officials, who consider them Washington-hatched schemes meant to undermine Russia’s influence in the region.
Similar uprisings in Georgia and Ukraine ushered in governments that quickly sought to shut out Moscow’s influence in favor of stronger ties with the West. Kyrgyzstan, however, has often sought to strike a balance among Washington, Moscow and Beijing. The government has allowed Russia to maintain a military base on Kyrgyz soil and is a member, along with China, Russia and three other Central Asian countries, of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security alliance.
Upon his election in 2005, Mr. Bakiyev vowed to pursue an independent foreign policy, saying that Kyrgyzstan would not be “a place for the fulfillment of someone else’s geopolitical interests.”
Alan Cowell contributed from London.
|
