In These New Times

People’s Daily Online

9th April, 2010

Kyrgyzstan’s self-proclaimed new leadership said on Thursday that Russia had helped to oust President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and that they aimed to close a U.S. airbase on their homeland, The Reuters reported.

Their comments set Wednesday’s overthrow of Bakiyev, who fled the capital Bishkek as crowds stormed government buildings, The Reuters reported Thursday.

No sooner had presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev signed an arms reduction pact in Prague as part of an effort to “reset” their strained relations than a senior official in Medvedev’s delegation urged Kyrgyzstan’s new leadership to shut the American airbase, the Reuter report said.

The official, who declined to be named, noted that Bakiyev had not fulfilled a promise to shut the Manas airbase, which the United States uses to supply NATO troops to war in Afghanistan.

Omurbek Tekebayev, a former Kyrgyz opposition leader who took charge of constitutional matters in the new government, said that “Russia played its role in ousting Bakiyev,” the Reuter report said.
“Now there is a high probability that the duration of the U.S. air base’s presence in Kyrgyzstan will be shortened,” Tekebayev said.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has categorically denied that Moscow had played a part in the ousting of Bakiyev in the former Soviet republic.

But Putin was the first foreign leader to recognize opposition figure Roza Otunbayeva as the new leader of Kyrgyzstan, and rang her soon after she said she was in de facto charge, the Reuter report said.

The United States said it had not yet decided whether to recognize Otunbayeva’s government.