Georgia Says It Would Consider Hosting U.S. Base
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Published: 12 Mar 09:31 EDT (13:31 GMT)
TBILISI - Ex-Soviet Georgia would seriously consider hosting a U.S. military base if asked and is prepared to act as a transit route for Western forces in Afghanistan, senior Georgian officials said March 12.
"If the United States thinks it wants to establish a base, we will seriously consider it," Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze told Japan's Nikkei newspaper in an interview published Thursday. He emphasized, however, that the U.S. and Georgia were not currently holding talks on the issue.
Georgia's deputy foreign minister, Giga Bokeria, said that as well as hosting a base the country was prepared to act as a conduit for troops and supplies to Afghanistan.
"Georgia was and remains ready to cooperate with the United States both on the deployment of U.S. bases on Georgian territory, if the U.S. expresses such a desire, and in using Georgian territory as a transit route to Afghanistan," he told AFP.
The remarks came as the U.S. steps up efforts to find new transit routes to supply coalition forces in Afghanistan amid growing instability in Pakistan, its main transit route, and the announcement by Central Asian nation Kyrgyzstan last month of the closure of a key U.S. airbase on its territory.
This week U.S. military officials held talks with government and business representatives from Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan about using the Caucasus region south of Russia as a transit route. The two days of talks were held in the Azerbaijani capital Baku.
There are nearly 70,000 international soldiers in Afghanistan helping the government fight an extremist insurgency led by the Taliban, who were in power between 1996 and 2001.
The deployment of a U.S. base in Georgia could seriously strain Washington's relations with Russia, which fought a brief war with Georgia last year.
Russia sent troops and tanks deep into Georgia last August in response to a Georgian military attempt to retake the Moscow-backed rebel region of South Ossetia.
Russian forces later mostly withdrew to within South Ossetia and another rebel region, Abkhazia, which Moscow has recognized as independent states.
