Sooner or later the United States will curtail the operation on Afghanistan, for the provision of which the US base Manas was deployed in Kyrgyzstan, after which presence of the military base in the territory of the country will no longer be necessary for the US, said Russian political expert Mikhail Remizov.
"2014 is a sufficient deadline for Washington to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan; furthermore, everything illustrates that Americans do not want to stay in Afghanistan long," Remizov, Director of the National Strategy Institute, told Trend from Moscow by telephone on Wednesday.
It is not crucially important for the United States to have its military presence in Kyrgyzstan despite the country's closeness to Russia and China, so Washington will not regard the issue of closure of Manas as a matter of paramount importance, especially in connection with the pullout of the coalition forces, he believes.
"Readiness of the new government of Kyrgyzstan to close Manas can not be regarded as a big geopolitical concession to the Kremlin. Moreover, a separately taken base in Manas is not such a geopolitical displeasure for Moscow that would have cost any serious exchange of interests," Remizov said.
The US Department of State is ready to hold discussions with the new government of Kyrgyzstan over the destiny of the military base at the Airport Manas, Victoria Noland, Spokesperson for the US Department of State, confirmed, Russian news agency Novosti reported.
The agreement of deployment of a US military base in the territory of the republic will remain valid till 2014. Kyrgyz Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev, who has won the presidential election according to the preliminary data of the Central Election Commission (CEC), stated earlier that he thought it was necessary to pull the US military base out of the territory of the republic. In explaining his position, he said the presence of the US base did not meet the interests of the republic and stressed that he would not like any country to deliver a retaliatory strike on the base. All the existing accords will be observed strictly, he said.
A US Air Force base was deployed at the International Airport Manas in the capital of Kyrgyzstan in 2001 at the sidelines of the Invincible Freedom Operation on Afghanistan.
Later on, it was renamed the Transit Transportation Center (TTC), which is the key point of transportation of US military equipment and servicemen toward the places of war actions in Afghanistan.