On Baseball: U.S., evicted from base, seeks alternative routes

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - The United States was on the verge of being kicked out of its only military outpost in Russia's historic backyard after Kyrgyzstan yesterday gave U.S. forces six months to vacate an air base that serves as a key supply hub for troops in Afghanistan.

The Manas base, created shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, was at first a symbol of what seemed like a budding strategic partnership between the United States and Russia.

But as relations between the countries soured in recent years, the base came to represent the renewed competition between the two former Cold War rivals.

Maj. Damien Pickart, a spokesman for the U.S. base, said he expected military officials to begin preparations for leaving.

"If they tell us that our time is up - which they've done today - then we'll start the necessary preparations to move operations," he said. "I don't know if it will take the full six months."

Pakistani extremists have stepped up attacks on convoys traveling the primary supply route to Afghanistan in recent months, pushing U.S. officials to secure alternative, northern routes through Central Asia. Manas was a vital link, serving as a transit point for 15,000 U.S. troops and 500 tons of cargo each month.

Kyrgyzstan's president announced the U.S. ouster from Manas shortly after Moscow promised $2.1 billion in loans and aid to the tiny, impoverished Central Asian country. Russia insists it did not influence the decision.

Washington is trying to come up with replacement routes for troops and materiel moving to and from the mountains of Afghanistan.

"I continue to believe this is not a closed issue, and that there remains the potential to reopen this issue," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday. "But we are developing alternative methods of getting resupply and people into Afghanistan."

One obvious alternative could be Uzbekistan, where the United States had a military air base supporting the Afghan conflict in 2001-05.

The commander of U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, traveled to the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, this week to meet with President Islam Karimov. No details of his visit were released.

Yesterday, U.S. Rear Adm. Mark Harnitchek said Uzbekistan had reached a deal for cargo to be shipped across its territory. He said some goods would be transported from Uzbekistan onward through Tajikistan, which also shares a direct border with Afghanistan.

The United States in 2007 opened a $37 million bridge over the Pyandzh River, which forms most of the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

Washington has reached similar agreements with Russia and Kazakhstan. But the tentative pact with Uzbekistan was particularly important, marking a warming of relations between U.S. officials and Uzbekistan's authoritarian president.

Karimov ordered a major U.S. air base in Uzbekistan closed after Washington criticized his government's deadly crackdown on antigovernment demonstrators in the city of Andijan in 2005.

Activists fear that, in exchange for basing rights, the Obama administration could tacitly agree not to press Karimov to halt human-rights abuses. Most of Karimov's opponents have been jailed or exiled.