Kazakstan’s president offers air and military bases for anti-terrorist effort

By Timofei Zhukov

Associated Press

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan – Kazakstan’s president said Monday that his Central Asian nation was ready to offer airspace and military bases for an anti-terrorist coalition.

“We’ve already given our general agreement that we’ll provide all necessary support. But there has been no concrete request yet,” President Nursultan Nazarbayev told a news conference in the Kazak capital, Astana.

Of the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia, Kazakstan is the farthest from Afghanistan, the target of potential retaliatory strikes for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Washington has expressed more interest in using bases in Uzbekistan or Tajikistan, which border Afghanistan.

The Central Asian nations and Russia – which wields considerable influence in the region – publicly have given conflicting signals about the extent of the assistance they would provide the United States for a military operation in Afghanistan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that Russia would allow the United States to use it airspace for planes carrying “humanitarian cargo” to the region and that the Central Asian states did not rule out providing the use of their airfields.

Russian officials made contradictory statements in recent days about their country’s stance on American use of bases in Central Asia. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said last week that Russia would object to U.S. military strikes from the region, but Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said it was up to each of the countries to make its own decision.

Putin spoke by phone Sunday with the leaders of all five of the former Soviet republics in the region, and said Monday that they had coordinated their positions on the issue.

Turkmenistan’s President Saparmurat Niyazov said Monday he had promised Secretary of State Colin Powell that his country’s territory and airspace could be used to bring food aid to neighboring Afghanistan.

Niyazov said during a Cabinet meeting that Powell asked permission for the corridors during a phone conversation on Friday. It was unclear where the cargo would come from or when.

Niyazov said nothing about allowing military overflights or ground transport, but reiterated his country’s neutral status.

The Russian Interfax news agency, quoting unidentified sources, said three U.S. Air Force transport planes had arrived in Uzbekistan this weekend carrying about 200 U.S. troops and reconnaissance equipment.

Uzbek Defense Ministry spokesman Bakhtiar Shakirov denied Monday that any U.S. planes had landed in Uzbekistan, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

However, a source in the main intelligence department of the Uzbek Defense Ministry told The Associated Press on Monday that two U.S. aircraft, a C-130 Hercules and a C-141 Starlifter, made a two-hour stop at Tashkent’s civilian airport on Thursday. Nothing was unloaded from the aircraft, the source said on condition of anonymity.

Both the Pentagon and a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent refused to comment. Powell, asked in an interview on ABC on Sunday whether troops had landed in Uzbekistan, said “not to my knowledge.”

AP reporters visited the military airfield outside Tashkent and saw no signs of any American presence there. The capital’s civilian airport is now heavily guarded and open only to ticketed passengers.

There were also unconfirmed media reports that U.S. forces had landed at an air base in Tajikistan. Tajik Defense Minister Sherali Khairullayev denied the reports and said there had been no discussion of allowing the United States to use Tajikistan’s bases, according to Interfax.