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Kyrgyz PM orders review of U.S. airbase agreement

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Kyrgyzstan's prime minister told the Foreign Ministry Friday to study possible changes to an agreement on a U.S. airbase, following a U.S. airman's fatal shooting of a Kyrgyz truck driver last week.
MOSCOW, December 15 (RIA Novosti) - Kyrgyzstan's prime minister told the Foreign Ministry Friday to study possible changes to an agreement on a U.S. airbase, following a U.S. airman's fatal shooting of a Kyrgyz truck driver last week.

Alexander Ivanov, 42, a driver with the fuel services company Aircraft Petroleum Management and a father of two, was shot dead December 6 by an airman identified by Kyrgyz investigators as Zachary Hatfield while undergoing a routine security check at the Manas airbase.

"Following the incident when an American serviceman killed a Kyrgyz national, we have adopted a decision to revise part of the agreement stipulating the status of U.S. military servicemen and civilian employees in Kyrgyzstan," Prime Minister Felix Kulov told a news conference.

After the fatal shooting, President Kurmanbek Bakiyev called for the immunity from prosecution enjoyed by U.S. servicemen to be removed.

Kyrgyzstan's parliament passed a resolution Friday instructing the government to consider closing the U.S. airbase in the Central Asian country's capital, Bishkek.

Manas is the only U.S. base in post-Soviet Central Asia since Uzbekistan evicted American troops from its territory last year. Kyrgyzstan recently raised the leasing fee for the Manas base from the current $2.6 million to $150 million as of 2007.

The command of the airbase, which the United States has maintained in Kyrgyzstan since its anti-terrorism campaign in neighboring Afghanistan in 2001, said earlier the U.S. airman who killed the Kyrgyz national acted in self-defense and in accordance with security instructions, a claim disputed by Ivanov's colleagues.

President Bakiyev has asked the U.S. to ensure that the serviceman accused of the killing remains in the country until the end of the probe being conducted by U.S. officials and Kyrgyz prosecutors. The Foreign Ministry has also pressed for his immunity to be lifted.

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