The agreement was concluded by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns. From an official release:

This agreement will enable the United States to further diversify the crucial transportation routes and decrease the amount of time needed to move troops and critical equipment to resupply international forces in Afghanistan and to bring needed supplies to the government and people of Afghanistan. This will permit 4,500 flights per year. The new transit routes will save the United States government up to $133 million annually in fuel, maintenance and other transportation costs, and this agreement is free of any air navigation charges. By providing access to these transit routes, the Russian Federation is enabling a substantial increase in the efficiency of our common effort to defeat the forces of violent extremism in Afghanistan and to ensure Afghanistan’s and the broader region’s security.

Mr. Bakiyev said in an interview with the BBC this week that “the doors are not closed” to talks with the U.S. about the base. He declined to discuss what kind of talks he was prepared for and said none were under way.

Later, a presidential spokesman denied that Mr. Bakiyev’s comments meant he was backing off on his decision to close the base. “The decision on the base is final,” said the spokesman, Almaz Turdumamatov. By August, “every last American soldier will have left the territory of Kyrgyzstan,” he said.

You know the song I mean.

Intriguingly, the Afghanistan supply dilemma could provide potential for a diplomatic opening to Iran, which recently completed a road linking the Afghan towns of Delaram and Zaranj to southern seaports. The San Francisco Chronicle quotes Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University, as saying: “I certainly think it [the road] represents an opportunity, particularly because it kind of takes up this relationship where it was last at its most amicable: that is, over Afghanistan.”

Pentagon and State Department officials have been frantically calling the Kyrgyz government to get it to reverse the decision — and it appears the parliament is delaying a vote on kicking the United States out — but now a delegation led by Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William J. Burns and the White House’s Russia specialist, Michael McFaul, are on their way to Moscow to deal with the patron as well as the client.

U.S. officials said they still hoped to persuade both Kyrgyzstan and Russia that, even though there are alternatives to the Manas base, its continued use would be most beneficial to Afghanistan’s stability. They also said they were open to Russian ideas about how cooperation in Central Asia can contribute to a better U.S.-Russia relationship.

Expect horsetrading, in other words.

Still, dealing with Karimov is unseemly. The Wall Street Journal reports that alternatives to both Manas and Karshi Khanabad include bases in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — neither of which are flourishing liberal democracies, but also aren’t egregious human rights violators to the degree Uzbekistan is. Both, of course, are much further from Afghanistan than Uzbekistan is. Not that I know the first thing about how to determine what is and isn’t a suitable air base.