Kyrgyzstan played a “dirty trick” in deciding to let the US keep using an airbase that Moscow wanted closed, a source in the Russian foreign ministry was quoted as saying yesterday.
The unnamed source, speaking to the Kommersant daily newspaper, vowed that Russia would make a “corresponding response” to the Central Asian country’s decision on the Manas airbase.
On Tuesday, Kyrgyzstan announced it had signed an agreement with the US allowing US personnel to keep using the airbase as a “transit center” for the transport of non-lethal military goods to Afghanistan.
The agreement effectively reversed an earlier decision in which Kyrgyzstan had ordered the Manas airbase to close — a decision that was widely believed to have been made under Russian pressure.
“The news about the preservation of the base was an extremely unpleasant surprise for us. We did not anticipate such a dirty trick,” the foreign ministry source told Kommersant.
The source said that Russia would give a “corresponding response” and dismissed the base’s new description as a “transit center,” saying that Manas would essentially remain a US military base.
“Renaming the base a center is a cosmetic alteration. The real nature of the US military presence in Central Asia has not changed, which goes against the interests of Russia and our agreements with the Kyrgyz government,” the source said.
The comments were much harsher than Russia’s official reaction, which said Kyrgyzstan had the “sovereign right” to make such a decision.
Manas airbase is used to ferry tens of thousands of troops in and out of Afghanistan each year and also hosts planes used for the mid-air refueling of combat aircraft.
Its loss would have been a blow to coalition military efforts in Afghanistan at a time when US President Barack Obama is seeking to step up the campaign against the Taliban.
Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced the decision to close the base in February during a visit to Moscow — on the same day that Russia unveiled a generous aid package to his impoverished country.
In the package, Russia agreed to settle an estimated US$180 million debt owed by Bishkek to Moscow, extend Kyrgyzstan a grant worth US$150 million, and loan it US$2 billion more, news agencies reported at the time. Russia has consistently denied playing any role in Kyrgyzstan’s decision to close the base. But the base’s presence had long irritated Moscow, which sees it as an intrusion into its former Soviet domains in Central Asia.
START TALKS
Meanwhile, the US said on Tuesday it has made progress in its negotiations with Russia toward forging a successor to a Cold War-era treaty to cut nuclear weapons arsenals.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly recalled that both Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev want “significant reductions” in such arsenals under a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).
“That’s what each ... country is working towards. I think that we’ve made progress in the talks that we’ve ... had so far,” Kelly told reporters without elaborating.
US and Russian negotiators met in Geneva on Tuesday as part of the preliminary START negotiations — their third and last scheduled round of talks before a summit between their presidents next month.
Kelly also played down differences with Russia over its demands that a new START treaty address Moscow’s opposition to US plans for a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, countries that were once under Soviet influence.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS