WASHINGTON — Uzbekistan has issued an eviction notice to a U.S. air base that has been used since 2001 to stage military and humanitarian operations in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said Saturday.
The notice, delivered Friday to the U.S. Embassy in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, gives the United States six months to comply, Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood said.
"The bottom line is, they want us out," he said.
The Uzbek government has increasingly bristled at the U.S. military presence, especially since the State Department joined international allies in calling for an inquiry into the shooting deaths of protesters during a rally in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijon in May.
Uzbek authorities describe the incident as a violent uprising that left 187 people dead, mostly "terrorists and extremists" in addition to police and security forces who were forced to fire weapons to quell the violence. Witnesses and human rights groups say that the gathering was an anti-government protest and that security forces killed more than 500 people when they fired into the crowd.
The diplomatic note terminating the base agreement arrived hours after neighboring Kyrgyzstan permitted the United Nations to airlift to Romania more than 400 Uzbek refugees it had been sheltering since the violence. From Romania, the refugees will be resettled in other countries, including the United States. Uzbekistan had demanded their return.
Anticipating eviction by Uzbekistan, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld won pledges from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan last week to let the United States continue using airfields there for operations in Afghanistan.
Kyrgyzstan does not border Afghanistan, and Tajikistan's roads into the country are poor, but Rumsfeld expressed optimism that those more distant bases would be adequate should Uzbekistan carry through on its threat to evict U.S. forces.
"We're always thinking ahead. We'll be fine," Rumsfeld said on a tour of Central Asia.
The U.S. air base in Uzbekistan, known as Karshi Khanabad, or "K2," was established after the Sept. 11 attacks as a staging area for military operations against the Taliban regime and Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan. Since the overthrow of the Taliban, the base has been used for humanitarian deliveries and special operations against insurgents in Afghanistan.
Pentagon officials had sought to renew the basing agreement, for which it has paid the government of Uzbek President Islam Karimov $15 million since 2001.
