I’ve got a couple more reasons why I think that the stories about a possible US base are nothing but mere speculation.
First, Turkmenistan strongly denies it.
“This information is mere fiction and is absolutely untrue,” the Turkmen Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
German and Russian media have reported in recent days that the Central Asian nation was considering hosting a U.S. military base, following Uzbekistan’s recent demand that U.S. troops withdraw from a base on its territory.
If you can read Russian, here is another story (thanks to Peter Leonard for the link).
And if Turkmenistan’s denial isn’t enough, the US is strongly denying that basing was ever discussed when Gen. Abizaid was in Turkmenistan.
Helen Lovejoy, the public affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy in Ashgabat, told RFE/RL today that there were never any negotiations about the U.S. use of military bases in Turkmenistan.
“This has been clarified yesterday formally by Ambassador [Tracy Ann] Jacobson here in Ashgabat and we can confirm that the United States government has no plans to establish military bases in Turkmenistan,” Lovejoy said.
Lovejoy knew about the many reports of the U.S. military moving from Uzbekistan to Turkmenistan, but she said General Abizaid did not even mention the issue when he met with the Turkmen president and subsequent stories to the contrary were full of inaccuracies.
“The subject itself [use of military bases] did not come up during the meeting of Centcom Commander General Abizaid with President Niyazov on 23 August. This meeting was apparently picked up by some Russian press and there were many inaccurate stories following the meeting,” Lovejoy said.
Lovejoy said there was security cooperation between the United States and Turkmenistan but nothing that equated to a military deal.
Of course, there are still those for whom these denials will not be enough. Let me just add a cautionary note though. I don’t want to entirely dismiss it, but the Russian press is not exactly known for its commitment to distinguish between well-founded facts and mere rumor and speculation. And ultimately, the Western reports were based on the Russian media. Are those reports worth mentioning? Sure. But they probably aren’t anything to get even the least bit worried by.
UPDATE: nCA has a funny takedown of the “kindergarten logic” they say the story is based on.
General Bezborodov’s statement of 30 August is the engine that is pulling the entire media campaign of Russian press. Let’s examine the three principle points of his statement.
In kindergarten logic, General Bezdorodov says:
*General Abizaid visited Turkmenistan and met with President Niyazov
*President Niyazov refused to attend the CIS summit in Kazan
*Americans are required to vacate Khanabad/Karshi base and they need another base in the region to relocate their facilities
Hence: Turkmenistan is going to give Mary-2 base to the United States.
As far as logic is concerned, you cannot get any more childish than that.
The simple minded Russian general and the stenographer Russian media tend to believe that General Abizaid goes around with a single point agenda: To commandeer military bases.
Equally funny is nCa’s assertion that if the US pressured Turkmenistan into offering a base, it would suffer international isolation for violating poor Turkmenistan’s neutrality.
UPDATE II: My favorite EurasiaNet author has more on the story.
Russian media outlets continue to publish articles claiming that the United States may establish a military base in Turkmenistan. The circumstances surrounding the media reports suggest that Russia is carrying out a disinformation campaign designed to exert pressure on Turkmenistan to adhere to Moscow’s geopolitical line in Central Asia.
He’s got a lot more to say, driving home how utterly asinine the Russian reports are.
{ 19 comments }
Turkmenistan? To host a US base? Turkmenistan? The country ruled by the Turkmenbashi? What do these people smoke?
The whole world’s gone crazy while I’ve been away. I knew I should’ve stayed on that sunny beach…
This is the low-intensity war I’ve been fighting lately. Madness, madness that the likes of EurasiaNet gave anyone the impression it was likely. (Well, any more likely than Kazakhstan or Tajikistan, both of which held defense talks with the US at the same time.)
Thanks for the info, Nathan. Off topic question: Has there been any official speculation about internal succession? I haven’t read anything since Nazarov was demoted a few years ago.
Succession? The Turkmenbashi cannot die! All of his surgeries have actually made him younger!
In other words, nope, haven’t heard a peep.
The Turkmenbashi cannot die?
So you’re saying his hair color is natural like Reagan’s?
Yep, changed back to black after he got that heart surgery in Germany way back when. Honest.
Well I guess only his hair …er, heart surgeon knows for sure. Thanks.
Not sure if you know the story, but after that surgery, he came back with this incredible dye-job. His story was that he was actually physically younger after the surgery. All the kids in school had to take time out of their studies to color in the gray-haired photos of Turkmenbashi with black markers to reflect the new truth.
There’s a great picture of him looking like a stand-in for Siegfried and Roy in the pre-black hair days here.
Hadn’t heard the black marker story. But if you think about it, it was the new “truth”. Pity the poor children when TB kicks and all of the colorized photos go gray again. Holy Oscar Wilde.
Btw, love the shot of him rubbing noses with his old pal Putin. Caption fun.
“Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on”
This is off topic, but someone keeps censoring my comment. I’ve posted replies twice to the message about Dr. Shirin Akiner’s talk. Hours later they were removed. This doesn’t seem like any technical accident – someone seems to be censoring my comment about Dr. Akiner.
Is this website owned by the Uzbek government now or something? I didn’t know that there was a policy of censorship here. .. I kinda thought we had a free exchange of ideas here.
Turns out the original poster of the Dr. Akiner notice removed my post (both times), not Nathan. I appologize for blaming the website. In any case the original post has now been removed. I don’t think my post was THAT contraversial, it was along the lines of:
Maybe Dr. Akiner could produce another television commercial for the Uzbek government afterwards. Shortly after the indident in Andijan, Dr. Akiner
decided to go on Uzbek state television and do an
interview discussing her findings. To me that is
supporting Uzbek government propaganda. Dr. Akiner
should know that the only reason that she (he?) was
granted an interview is because her findings supported
the Uzbek government. Even though she was merely
reporting her own opinion, I think this was supporting
Uzbek government propaganda because no other competing
opinions were allowed to be mentioned.
And here’s that Kommersant story in English, by the way;
http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?idr=529&id=606613
And since we’re on the topic if Turkmenistan, the latest is that Niyazov has declared his plans to build a zoo in the Kara-Kum desert just north of Ashgabad. Among other birds will be penguins. Read more (in Russian) here:
http://top.rbc.ru/index.shtml?/news/funs/2005/09/08/08104231_bod.shtml
or in English here;
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,16521525-13762,00.html?name=otherside
If this base comes in, I’ll join the army.
Peter,
“Gazprom, which has already signed an agreement with Turkmenistan for the purchase of the same volume of gas beginning in 2007, said that the new agreement with Naftogaz will not be valid without Gazprom’s approval.”
As I recall Ukraine and Turkmenistan never got the gas pipeline project agreed on in 2000 off the ground. So this proposed deal will entail some new delivery challenges. But Itera’s been out of the picture for a while and I don’t know what leverage Gazprom has over ETG. That is, what can Gazprom do to muck up the deal other than reduce exports to Ukraine? Do they even have leverage on that dimension with Tymoshenko back in the saddle and Turkmenistan approximately able to produce enough to cover Ukraine’s gas shortfall (probably at the expense of production earmarked for Russia)? Aren’t Gazprom’s hands pretty much tied here?
Anodyne,
As far I know EuralTransGas disappeared in a haze of murky allegations over possible associations with organized crime. The company currently in charge of gas trasportation from Turkmenistan to Ukraine, via Russia, is RosUkrEnergoprom. Implicit in the fact that all deliveries need to pass through Russia may not be a stumbling in the legal sense, but there is every reason it could be a stumbling block later. To give one example, Russia could easily block or confiscate any deliveries as a tit-for-tat retaliation for Ukranian misappropriation of gas. There was an item about this in a Russian paper I read a few weeks back.
The subject is, however, all in flux, as this recent report (15 August) in Ukranian, translated by BBC Monitoring, suggests;
“This year’s first round of Ukrainian-Russian talks on gas supplies, which was to begin today in Moscow, has been postponed.
The Ukrainian delegation, headed by Energy Minister Ivan Plachkov and Justice Minister Roman Zvarych, was to resolve the gas conflict between Moscow and Kiev. Specifically, the talks were to focus on the pricing policy of Gazprom, which stated its intent to raise the gas price three-fold and to switch to cash payments for transit of Russian gas through Ukraine. Other unsolved questions include the conditions for transit of Turkmen gas by Russia, volumes of gas supplies to Ukraine in 2006 and the use of Ukrainian storage facilities for Russian gas.”
I just can’t keep up with these ratbastards anymore. So RosUkrEnergoprom is a joint venture between Gazprom and Raiffeisen Bank. Do Turkmenistan and Ukraine have separate delivery agreements with them? Is there an alternative transportation avenue? If not, is TB relying on Ukraine’s pull to keep Gozprom from interfering in their deal? Or is this TB’s way of extracting rents from Russia in the form of lower prices or pre-financing in any new pipeline agreements? Feel free to shrug your shoulders on this one.
Speak of the devil. Looks like Ms.Tymoshenko will have to live off of unemployment for a while.
Shrugging my shoulders is about the best I can do on the matter. Though I have followed this question for some time, as a friend of mine was involved in a lawsuit with ETG (a company I briefly worked upstairs from at one point. They are in the same building in Moscow as Raiffeisen, intriguingly…), I am still at a loss to understand the minutiae of a lot of the goings-on.
However, you did bring up some interesting questions that I may bring up with a Ukranian pal of mine who is positively obsessive on the subject. Watch this space… or another space.
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