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Kyrgyz Aviators Attack the USAF
A special commission of the Kyrgyz Ministry of Transport and Communications held a press conference yesterday in Bishkek at which it demanded that the agreement on the American airbase at Manas Airport in the Kyrgyz capital be reconsidered. Financial claims against the Americans were also made known. This is a new twist in relations that were already serious complicated by the December 6 shooting of Kyrgyz fuel tanker driver Alexander Ivanov by an American sentry at the airbase. Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiev has forbidden that sentry to leave the country until the completion of the investigation of the incident.
The Kyrgyz commission blamed the American pilots of a U.S. Air Force KC-135 refueling aircraft with a Kyrgyz Tu-145M passenger plane at Manas Airport on September 26. The Kyrgyz craft landed at the airport in the late evening of that day after completing a Bishkek-Osh-Moscow flight. It had already landed with 52 passengers and nine crewmembers on board when it spotted the KC-135 in its path and took to the air again, shearing off 2.5 meters of the right wing. The Kyrgyz plane, which belonged to state-run Kyrgyzstan Airlines, then circled the airport and landed again. Deputy director of the Kyrgyz Department of Civil Aviation Alik Askarov told the press conference that the KC-135 was left on the runway after it landed and the American crew did not inform airport traffic control of its location. The crafts dark protective coloring prevented the pilots of the Tu-154 from spotting in advance. The Kyrgyz airline suffered $3 million in damages as a result of the mishap.
“We demand the reconsideration of the conditions of the agreement with the United States and will insist on compensation for material damages,” Askarov stated. The commission's report has already been submitted to the country's president, prime minister and prosecutor general. The Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry provided the U.S. embassy and the command of the airbase with copies of the commission's findings as well.
The Manas Airport air traffic control also presented demands at the press conference. Kyrgyzaeronavigatsia representative Anarbek Dolotaliev stated that “the USAF airbase has run up a debt of $15 million to air dispatchers in five years.” The dispatchers are threatening to service the American planes if the debt is not paid.
The American airbase was opened in 2001 for use by the antiterrorist collation in Afghanistan. After the coup in Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek began to demand a new agreement on the use of the base, the Americans have avoided concluding a new agreement so far. The recent killing if Kyrgyz citizen on the airbase and the financial demands made public yesterday seriously complicate relations between the base and the state. There are about 1000 servicemen, mainly American soldiers, on the base, as well as a small number of transport and refueling planes that support operations in Afghanistan.
www.commersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 14, 2006
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