BISHKEK. June 8 (Interfax) - The Kyrgyz Prosecutor General's Office has asked U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul to provide explanations to his claims about bribes allegedly offered for the Manas air base, a representative of the Prosecutor General's Office told Interfax on Friday.
"The Prosecutor General's Office has asked U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul to provide explanations shortly to his claims that the Russian authorities in 2008 bribed the Kyrgyz president to get the U.S. air base removed from Kyrgyzstan," he said.
A written request has been sent out already, he said.
The U.S. ambassador was asked to provide facts to the statement he made at the Higher School of economics in Moscow's to the effect that both Russia and the United States had offered bribes to the Kyrgyz authorities. Russia allegedly wanted the U.S. air base removed from Kyrgyzstan, while the U.S. to get its term extended, he also said.
McFaul also claimed, he said, that Russia had bribed Kyrgyzstan to get Americans ousted from Manas and that the U.S. had offered a bribe one tenth the size of the Russian. McFaul later expressed regret about the words spokesmen, saying that instead of the word 'bribe" he should have used "a package of economic aid."
Wile awaiting McFaul's explanations the Prosecutor General's Office is conducting a preliminary check into the U.S. diplomat's claims, analyzing his other statements.
Irrespective of what the answer will be like, prosecutors will not be able to conduct any active investigation, since the persons referred to in the claims, among them the Kyrgyz president who signed the law on the American base's withdrawal in February 2009 and then another law on the base's transformation into an American transit center, are outside Kyrgyzstan now, as they were forced to leave the country after the regime change in April 2010, he said.