US to ship military cargo via Kyrgyzstan: US

A new agreement that allows the United States to retain a key military base in Kyrgyzstan will allow it to ship military cargo as it did before, a senior US official told AFP yesterday.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said that despite reports to the contrary, the US airbase at Manas would continue to be used to transit military cargo to Afghanistan.
"It still will allow us to transit the kinds of cargo with logistical support and personnel that we need," he said.
"It's a broad umbrella and it includes what we have been doing under the previous agreement."
Kyrgystan -- an impoverished Central Asian state -- changed course after ordering the US base to close in February, a decision that would have been a blow to US efforts in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban.
Under the agreement, which was ratified by the Kyrgyz parliament Thursday, Washington will more than triple its rent for the base, which Bishkek had long complained was too low.
Kyrgyz officials have said that the deal involved only non-lethal supplies like building materials, food, medicine, clothing and water.
But the text of the agreement places no restrictions on what US forces may ship through it, saying it may include "any form of personal property, equipment, provisions, materials, technology."
The key functions of the Manas airbase are the ferrying of tens of thousands of troops in and out of Afghanistan each year and the hosting of planes used for the mid-air refuelling of combat aircraft.
Under the new agreement, the US official said, those operations would continue. He made the comments on the sidelines of a Nato regional security summit being held in Kazakhstan's capital Astana.