The United States will transfer $15 million to the Kyrgyz provisional government as rent for the Pentagon's transit center, the U.S. president's special assistant for national security said on Tuesday.
Michael McFaul said during a visit to the Kyrgyz capital that the first quarterly rent payment since the ouster of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev would be made on Wednesday. He added that during a meeting with the interim government he also discussed the restoration of democracy and urgent economic aid to Kyrgyzstan.
The military base was built on the territory of Bishkek's Manas airport in 2001 to service the U.S.-led international military operations in nearby Afghanistan.
In early 2009, the Kyrgyz government announced that all U.S. troops would have to leave the country, but later agreed a deal with the Pentagon that increased the rent to $60 million a year and turned the base into a transit center.
Russia also has a base near Bishkek, and in April expressed its readiness to provide aid to Kyrgyzstan's interim government. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Russia would give Kyrgyzstan a $20 million grant and a $30 million concessional loan to help stabilize the economic situation in the ex-Soviet republic after the riots in early April that led to the opposition taking power and Bakiyev's departure.
The self-declared interim government urgently needs funds and fuel to normalize conditions in the impoverished Central Asian republic.
BISHKEK, May 4 (RIA Novosti)
