AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
Bishkek: Washington is to send a delegation to Kyrgyzstan to negotiate over Bishkek's demands for a hundred-fold rent increase on a US airbase in the Central Asian state, President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said Saturday.
The delegation will arrive on May 22 and 23 to sort out the problem “once and for all”, the Kyrgyz president announced on national radio.
Bakiyev said in February that he wanted to raise the rent on the base at Manas airport near Bishkek to 207 million dollars (162 million euros) per year, 100 times what Washington had previously been paying.
He recently threatened to close the base, a staging post and support centre for operations in neighbouring Afghanistan, if an agreement had not been reached by June 1.
“We are not haggling as though we were in a bazaar,” the president warned.
Rent negotiations have been underway since summer 2005.
In July 2005 Kyrgyzstan, as part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a six-nation security bloc led by Russia and China, called for a deadline to be set for the closure of US bases in Central Asia.
Bakiyev retreated from that position after a visit by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in July, but said Washington could only hold on to the base if a new financial agreement were reached.
Washington is particularly keen to keep the Manas base open since the other US airbase in the region, in Uzbekistan, closed in November 2005.
Russia opened a base not far from Manas in 2003, underscoring tensions between Washington and Moscow over influence in the region.
