President in No Hurry for U.S. Troops to Leave
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Uzbek President Islam Karimov said he has no deadline for U.S. troops to pull out of a military base used for U.S. operations in neighboring Afghanistan.
Speaking after a regional leaders’ meeting in Tashkent, the capital, concerning security issues, Karimov said talk of Russian concerns about a U.S. military presence in its former “backyard” smacks of “the stereotypes of old.”
“All these questions will be decided on the basis of the interests of each individual state and the situation that arises in one region or another,” he said.
Karimov has allowed the Khanabad air base in the south of the country to be used for humanitarian missions by the United States, which now has an estimated 1,500 personnel stationed there.
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