NATO to Help Kyrgyzstan in Anti-Terror Mission?

NATO

Otunbayeva and Rasmussen

Kyrgyzstan's president Roza Otunbayeva visited Brussels this week and met with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. And Otunbayeva said she was asking for help from NATO in dealing with terror threats coming from Afghanistan. From her press conference with Rasmussen:

And first of all, I would stress on the issues of the neighbouring Afghanistan and I must tell you that my serious of worries about the borders; borders with Tajikistan and then with Afghanistan. This is a concern which we have. And so we must strengthen our border troops, and I talked with the Secretary General about this matter.

We faced terroristic acts last... late last year, of last year, and this is new chapter on terroristic work which we want to learn and really to develop among the people and also with the ministries relevant. This is what we want very much to learn from NATO.

And certainly we are talking about this partnership program, Secretary General, this acronyms which you mentioned, a purpose(?) under way, and the progress between Kyrgyzstan and NATO and we want to have a real progress. We talked about this, and I hope that in our development between NATO and Kyrgyzstan we reach concrete results of this year and we're looking forward to strengthen our security forces with the NATO assistance and we want to learn from this Alliance of free societies, democratic countries, how to make safe our country.

Both the U.S. and Russia have talked about setting up anti-terror training facilities in southern Kyrgyzstan, but nothing has yet come of either of those.

James Appathurai, NATO's special representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, was in Washington this week and spoke yesterday at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins. He said he was planning to travel to Kyrgyzstan in the next two-three months to discuss the plan further, but wouldn't give any more details -- including how he thinks Russia might react. I will be watching @DRogozin for his take...