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EURASIA INSIGHT

KYRGYZSTAN: BISHKEK DENIES PLAN TO DUMP AMERICAN AIR BASE
1/12/09

A Russian daily newspaper dropped a bombshell on January 12, reporting that Kyrgyzstan’s president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, was ready to break an agreement with the United States that gives coalition forces access to the air base at Manas. The report drew an immediate denial in Bishkek.

The Russian report in Vremya Novostei alleged that Bakiyev was willing to expel the US military in return for up to $2 billion in Russian assistance. The president would sign an executive decree that would close down the Manas facility by the end of the first half of 2009, the report added. Bakiyev is due to travel to Moscow later in January.

The Kyrgyz president’s office had no immediate comment on the report, but a prominent MP in Bishkek strongly refuted the idea, contending that Bakiyev did not have the constitutional authority to make such a deal.

"Any decision to extend or terminate an international agreement [concerning the US presence at Manas] is made exclusively by parliament," the official Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted the MP, Kabai Karabekov, as saying. Other experts suggested the report could be a ploy, in which Kyrgyzstan attempts to gain additional financial benefits from Washington.

Karabekov added that it was in Kyrgyzstan’s strategic interests to keep American military personnel at Manas. The air base is used by coalition forces for the re-supply of ongoing military operations in Afghanistan. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. "Although the situation in Afghanistan has improved since the signing of the [Manas base] agreement, it is still far from being stable [in Afghanistan], and [this] causes us concern," Karabekov said.

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