Washington lavished rare praise on Russia's new military base in Tajikistan yesterday, saying it was a key element in building stability in a region threatened by terrorism and drug trafficking.
"It is an important step to strengthen stability in the region and open new possibilities to cooperate in the anti-terrorism struggle," the US ambassador to Tajikistan, Mr Richard Hoagland, said.
He was visiting the base in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, which was opened last month by Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is Moscow's biggest military base abroad.
Mr Hoagland's comments came a day after Moscow said President Bush's re-election would bolster the US-led "war on terror".
Russia has increased its military presence in ex-Soviet Central Asia after agreeing, some say reluctantly, to the US opening bases there following the September 11th, 2001, attacks blamed on al-Qaeda.
Tajikistan and other former Soviet states became Washington's allies in the subsequent US-led war to oust Afghanistan's Taliban regime accused of harbouring al-Qaeda.
Mr Hoagland said it was "a pleasure to have Russian troops in Tajikistan", which borders Afghanistan.
"I believe that the new military base was founded to fight terrorism and drug trafficking," he added, after laying flowers at a monument to Russian soldiers who died in Tajikistan's 1992-1997 civil war.
Moscow is worried by the flow of drugs from post-Taliban Afghanistan, now the world's biggest producer of heroin.
Despite friction over troops from NATO countries based inside Moscow's sphere of influence, Mr Putin and Mr Bush have forged a close relationship that Russian opposition to the US-led war in Iraq has failed to derail.
They have stressed their partnership in the struggle against al-Qaeda's leader Osama bin Laden, thought to be hiding in Afghanistan.
US troops, granted airbases by Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and overflight permits by Kazakhstan, use Central Asia as a stepping stone to Afghanistan.
The military base in Tajikistan, formerly the headquarters of Russia's 201st Division on Dushanbe's outskirts, is home to 5,000 troops, 460 armoured vehicles and five Sukhoi Su-25 jets.
Russian forces were a stabilising factor in Tajikistan's civil war that claimed over 100,000 lives, and a buffer against Taliban-run Afghanistan. - (Reuters)