Foreign Minister Askar Aitmatov told a news conference in Bishkek on 14 February that Kyrgyzstan has rejected a U.S. request to station AWACS aircraft at the U.S. air base in Manas, RFE/RL\'s Kyrgyz Service reported. Aitmatov said that the decision was based on consultations with fellow member states in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan). Aitmatov said that reconnaissance aircraft are not compatible with the declared mission of the U.S. base in Kyrgyzstan, which was set up to support operations in Afghanistan. Russia\'s \"Kommersant-Daily\" reported on 12 February, however, that the decision to keep U.S. AWACS out of Kyrgyzstan was one of the conditions Russia\'s Foreign Ministry set for Aitmatov when the latter asked Moscow to support the regime of Kyrgyz President Askar Akaev in the 27 February parliamentary elections. (RFE/RL)