Turkmenistan would be unlikely to allow the United States to use its territory to carry out air strikes against suspected terrorist bases in Afghanistan, a Turkmen source said Monday.
"This can't happen, because Turkmenistan is a neutral country," a source in the Turkmen foreign ministry told AFP.
Turkmenistan, which shares a long border with Afghanistan, has stayed neutral in its Afghan policy despite mounting concern in other central Asian states about the Taliban's alleged backing of Islamist militancy.
"The fact that Turkmenistan is in touch with the Taliban movement and the Northern Alliance does not mean that Ashkhabad prefers one of them to the other. It [Turkmenistan] acts as a peacemaker," the source added.
The former Soviet central Asian state of five million people, which also borders on Iran, hopes one day to export its vast energy reserves through Afghanistan.
Meanwhile the Washington Post reported that another former Soviet state, Uzbekistan, was open to allowing the United States to use Uzbek airspace or territory for an attack across its border with Afghanistan.
A foreign ministry spokesman in the Uzbek capital Tashkent refused to confirm or deny the report.
Uzbekistan has frequently accused Taliban-ruled Afghanistan of sheltering Islamic militants, mainly Uzbek exiles, who launched incursions into this former Soviet state in August 2000.
The Washington Post report comes after Russia, which views the Central Asian region as its backyard, signaled that it would not let NATO troops be based in former Soviet republics for any potential US campaign against Afghanistan.
But Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are independent states and have stubbornly avoided moves by Moscow to regain its influence in the region since the Soviet Union's collapse a decade ago -- ASHKHABAD (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
