Americans already in Kirghizia

Washington will render assistance to the countries on whose territory terrorist groups are operating, US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in an interview to the New York Times. According to Wolfowotz, the next step of the anti-terrorist campaign is the annihilation of terrorist bases in such countries as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Some of these countries, in particular Somalia and Yemen, cannot overcome terrorism on their own, Wolfowitz claims. This was why the Pentagon will help them in preparing anti-terrorist operations.

Mr Wolfowitz seems to be over modest: in addition to the above-mentioned countries, Central Asian republics of the former USSR also belong to US sphere of interest. Referring to such a good pretext as rendering assistance in anti-terrorist fight, the US settled down first in Uzbekistan and then in Kirghizia. Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan seem to wait their turn.

Nobody will state that there are no terrorists in Kirghizia, as extremists of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan remind from time to time of their existence to the Kirghiz leadership. The movement does not represent a danger to Kirghizia, though Americans are in the country, and this is a fact.

In January, at the international airport of the Kirghiz capital, the presence of the US military, which is participating in anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan, should come to an end. The first US military aircraft landed at the Manas airport already in the middle of last December. They transported US military and humanitarian loads for Afghanistan to Kirghizia. The legal base for US military’s presence in the country was a Kirghiz-US intergovernmental agreement about putting objects on Kirghiz territory in US military’s disposal. It is supposed that in Manas about 3,000 soldiers and up to 60 aircraft will be stationed.

Why did Kirghizia agree to the location of a US military contingent on its territory? The answer is money, which means credits of the International Currency Fund, US goods, and so on. For the poor republic, this US aid is a kind of manna. President Akaev seems to have forgotten about the Treaty of Joint Security his republic has signed with Russia. So such a demarche of the Kirghiz leadership will hardly please Moscow.

How smart these Yankees are: as 200 years ago when they bought the Indians’ land for a trifle, so today they act in Kirghizia.

Dmitry Litvinovich PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Vera Solovieva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/01/08/35366.html