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Russia Plays Tricky Game With U.S. Over Kyrgyzstan Base
Reuters ^ | Wed Feb 4, 2009

Posted on 02/04/2009 12:26:26 PM PST by nickcarraway

Russia has embarked on a risky political game with new U.S. President Barack Obama by forcing its ally Kyrgyzstan to close a U.S. military base while keeping up overtures to establish warmer relations with Washington.

The Manas air base near the capital of the Central Asian state is a key supply centre for U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan, a campaign that Obama has set as a key priority.

Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev standing alongside Russia's Dmitry Medvedev at a news conference in Moscow, said on Tuesday he would close the base after securing a vital rescue package of over $2 billion from Russia.

The surprise move came in the middle of Medvedev's overtures to Obama aimed at raising bilateral ties from post-Cold War lows where they have languished since the days of former U.S. President George W. Bush.

"One could not have chosen a worst moment for such move," Alexei Malashenko of Carnegies Endowment for Peace think tank said.

Russian officials have said they received positive signals from Washington on key points of disagreement -- U.S. plans to station parts of a missile defence system in Eastern Europe and the issue of NATO membership for ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia.

Russian pressure on Kyrgyzstan to close Manas sits oddly since analysts have seen the NATO effort to defeat the Taliban as one of the few areas in which the interests of Washington and Moscow largely coincide.

(Excerpt) Read more at uk.reuters.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Russia
KEYWORDS: bho44; bhoforeignpolicy; bhorussia; kyrgyzstan; obama; russia
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To: SeeSharp

I think im for J-V. Don’t see anything wrong with saying if a nation refuses to let citizens emmigrate freely, they don’t get MFN status.

Reagan and Scoop Jackson were solidly for this and i am too. About the only opposition to this is that Jews were the main beneficiaries, and of course, Jew haters dont like anything like that.

Good enough for Reagan, who supported the “refuseniks”, then good enough for me.


21 posted on 02/04/2009 1:20:22 PM PST by DesertRhino (Dogs earn the title of "man's best friend", Muslims hate dogs,,add that up.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

“Russia is the source and enabler of islamic jihad the world over.”

Except when it’s tried on their own soil, like Chechnya. Then they try to crush the jihad in their typically brutal and heavy-handed manner.

I call it “NIMBY Jihad.”


22 posted on 02/04/2009 1:28:20 PM PST by henkster (When I was young I was told anyone could be President. Now I believe it.)
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To: tcrlaf
He’s been out-chessed...

Or out-checkered, out-tiddley-winked, out-marbled, or even out-hopscotched.

No clue whatsoever.

23 posted on 02/04/2009 1:32:21 PM PST by ken in texas (come fold with us - team #36120)
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To: tcrlaf
He’s been out-chessed..

I'd say he was never in the game.

24 posted on 02/04/2009 1:33:19 PM PST by b4its2late (Ignorance allows liberalism to prosper.)
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To: henkster
The Russians have put a "former" Chechen terrorist in charge of Chechnya and incorporated whole units of Chechen "former rebels" into the red army. These Red neo-Soviet jihadist animals were sent into Georgia last August to exterminate Orthodox Christians.

As I said, Russia is the evil behind jihad, everywhere in there world, even in their own backyard. Basayev, the butcher of Beslan, was trained by the FSB and fought alongside the Russian Army in the early nineties in Georgia when the Russian barbarians first invaded and occupied Georgian land. Russia created the Chechen jihadists in the first place and unleashed them upon the Christian world.

25 posted on 02/04/2009 1:37:13 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
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To: DesertRhino
When Georgia attacked S. Ossetia where Russian troops were located, and had been since the days of Thomas Jefferson, we worked to humilate them

When the Bolsheviks invaded Georgia in 1918, the Ossetians sided with the Boslheviks against independent Georgia.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Georgia became an independent nation. Russian "peacekeepers" did not occupy South Ossetia again until 1992.

The Ossetians supported the Bolsheviks before and now they are supporting the new Bolsheviks, KGB Putin and his neo-Soviet terrorist state.

26 posted on 02/04/2009 1:54:18 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
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To: Nervous Tick
Henceforth, you can be “Barry Hussein BM” (which seems appropriate), and they can be “Koyragyzastan”.

Except for the fact that I don't want to sound like Chrissy Matthews... I'd say:HA!

Clever.

27 posted on 02/04/2009 3:08:33 PM PST by paulycy ("BEWARE the LIBERAL/MEDIA Complex")
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To: nickcarraway
This all classic Russian negotiation by media. Un-named "officials" or "generals" running their mouth with some all or nothing, apocalyptic, no prisoner, taunts.

They're testing the new kid on the block that's all.

28 posted on 02/04/2009 3:10:08 PM PST by gandalftb (An appeaser feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last......)
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To: DesertRhino

Don’t you know that Israel granted Russian citisens visa-free access last year?

http://en.rian.ru/world/20080320/101840804.html


29 posted on 02/04/2009 3:42:03 PM PST by tetuhe1898
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To: tetuhe1898; cardinal4

“The Great Game” V.2 is afoot.


30 posted on 02/04/2009 4:56:44 PM PST by Ax (Thanks to global warming,, there are no more polar bears in Panama.)
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To: DesertRhino

Russia has no restrictions on emigration now though.


31 posted on 02/05/2009 2:18:42 AM PST by SeeSharp
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