– The president of the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan on Tuesday signed a bill ordering the closure of a US airbase that serves as the main transit hub for NATO forces in Afghanistan.
According to the bill, US forces must abandon the base at Manas International Airport, near the capital Bishkek, by July 2014.
The Kyrgyz parliament overwhelmingly approved the legislation last week.
Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev already in 2011 announced plans to shut the base down by 2014, when the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force is to be pulled out of Afghanistan.
Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary opposition, however, claimed that the bill was premature because the government had failed to explain how it was going to compensate for the $60 million that the country receives annually from the United States to operate the base, set up in 2001.
http://en.rian.ru
26/6/13
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Russia to Start Sending Weapons to Kyrgyzstan This Year....
ReplyDeleteBISHKEK, June 26 (RIA Novosti)
– Russia’s defense minister has said Moscow would begin sending weapons and other military equipment to Kyrgyzstan this year, not in 2014, as previously announced.
Supplies as part of a bilateral armed forces assistance program will start in “the fourth quarter of 2013,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at a meeting with the head of the Central Asian state.
Igor Korotchenko, head of the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Global Arms Trade, previously told RIA Novosti that Russia’s decision to supply arms to Kyrgyzstan was based in part on a desire to curb the spread of Islamic extremism in the post-Soviet region.
He also said arms supplies would most likely include tanks, armored vehicles and personnel carriers, as well as rocket launchers, artillery, small arms, and surveillance and communication systems.
In November, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper wrote that Moscow had pledged to provide $1.1 billion worth of military assistance to Kyrgyzstan.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20130626/181892681/Russia-to-Start-Sending-Weapons-to-Kyrgyzstan-This-Year.html
26/6/13