Kirgistan

[ThomasWach]

Und nun das ganze mal aus amerikanischer Perspektive und eingebettet in die amerikanisch-russischen Beziehungen mit all ihren Problemen:

News Analysis
Russia Offers Kind Words, but Its Fist Is Clenched

(...)
On Tuesday, in Moscow to accept $2.15 billion in Russian aid, Kyrgyzstan’s president announced a decision to close an air base in Manas that the United States uses. That move poses a formidable obstacle to Mr. Obama’s biggest foreign policy aim, prosecuting the Afghanistan war.

Maybe this should not have come as a surprise. Starting with the bristling speech by President Dmitri A. Medvedev hours after Mr. Obama was elected, the signals from Moscow to the new American administration have veered from hostile to conciliatory and back. Moscow is clearly exploring the idea of cooperation. But it also insists, in arm-twisting fashion, that Mr. Obama make Russia’s interests a priority.
(...)
“Can you imagine, after the Georgia war, that Russia would lobby Kyrgyzstan on behalf of the United States?” he asked. He added that the decision “was not something Russia did, it was something against which Russia didn’t object.”
(...)

Quelle:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/world/...ussia.html