BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan -- President Kurmanbek Bakiyev threatened Wednesday to expel American troops if the United States did not agree by June 1 to pay more for stationing forces in the Central Asian nation.
"Kyrgyzstan reserves the right to consider ending the agreement" on the deployment of U.S. forces in the former Soviet republic, where they are based for operations in neighboring Afghanistan, Bakiyev said on state television.
He said the government could terminate the agreement if talks on new financial terms of the U.S. military deployment did not end successfully before June 1.
Bakiyev's administration, which came to power after a March 2005 uprising, has sought to increase revenues from the U.S.-led base set up in December 2001 at Kyrgyzstan's main civilian airport near the capital, Bishkek.
His statement sends a worrying signal to Washington, which lost its other base in the strategic Central Asian region last year when neighboring Uzbekistan expelled U.S. troops following Western criticism of the government's bloody May 2005 crackdown on demonstrators in the country's east.
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