Incentivized

What did House appropriators decide to do with a $30 million White House request to buy a new air traffic safety system for Kyrgyzstan, host country of Manas Air Base? The funds were requested as part of the fiscal year 2009 wartime supplemental made public last month.

A review of the House Appropriations Committee report on the legislation and the panel chairman's statements from this week aren't entirely conclusive, so we posed the question to the office of John Murtha (D-PA), the defense subcommittee chairman.

According to Matthew Mazonkey, Murtha's spokesman, the supplemental bill in its current form would fully fund the plan out of "coalition support accounts."

But there's a catch.

"However, these funds are contingent upon a renewed agreement between the United States and Kyrgyzstan over the use of Manas Air Base," Mazonkey told us in an e-mail.

Some news reports suggest negotiations to that effect are still ongoing between U.S. and Kyrgyz government officials, although others quote Kyrgyz officials as denying this. Pentagon officials have described the installation, located outside the capital Bishkek, as a critical hub for transport flights to Afghanistan.

As it stands, U.S. military officials have until August to close up shop at Manas.