http://www9.sbs.com.au/theworldnews/region.php?id=115317®ion=2
?"US TOLD TO LEAVE CENTRAL ASIA"
6.7.2005. 10:03:51
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "?Leaders of a six-nation security bloc led by Beijing and Moscow called for a deadline to be set for the withdrawal of US forces from bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
The presidents of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which comprises Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and China, signed a declaration calling for deadlines to be set on the closure of airbases used by US forces in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
"Considering that the active phase of the military anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan has finished, member states... consider it essential that the relevant participants in the anti-terrorist coalition set deadlines on the temporary use" of bases in the SCO area, the declaration read.
The two main coalition bases, one at Karshi-Khanabad in Uzbekistan, the other at Manas in Kyrgyzstan, have each been used to support US-led operations in Afghanistan since 2001.
Germany also has a few hundred military personnel, most of them engineering and medical staff, at a separate base in Uzbekistan, Termez, while a few hundred French forces work from Tajikistan's main airport in Dushanbe.
The declaration also included a call for "non-interference in the internal afairs of sovereign states," seemingly a swipe at growing Western influence in Central Asia, which Moscow has long considered its sphere of influence."