Sarkozy brings ‘new tone’ on role in NATO

Kyrgyzstan’s foreign minister sought to allay U.S. concerns about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in an interview, maintaining that the burgeoning alliance is not a military organization and is not designed to limit U.S. influence in the region.

In spite of this diplospeak, the record of the meeting tells another story altogether:

The bloc linking China, Russia and four Central Asian states…

(a central Asian anti-American version of a sort of wannabe NATO?

…startled the U.S. government at its 2005 summit in Kazakhstan with a call for a deadline for the closing of all foreign bases in the region. Kyrgyzstan is home to the Manas base, the key U.S. Air Force site for supporting the mission in Afghanistan.

The SCO countries also granted Iran “observer” status in the organization, something the United States was denied.

Of course, given that none of the participants are really very sympathetic to the Islamist agenda, they’re supposedly not QUITE cutting off their noses to spite their face:

Kyrgyzstan, considered the most politically liberal of the Central Asian states, hosted the most recent SCO summit in its capital, Bishkek, in August. Speaking through an interpreter, (Kyrgyz President) Mr. Karabaev, who met with top Bush administration officials on a visit here last week, said there is a “common understanding” among all the SCO partners that Manas will be available to the United States and its coalition partners as long as needed for stabilization and counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan. All the SCO members “do recognize that the base helps to solve issues of international security in our region,” he said.

Sort of like the Donks here in the US, who inveigh ad nauseum against the war in Iraq, but won’t cut off the funding, or for that matter impose a surrender date-certain.

Weasels one and all!