Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday cautiously welcomed a deal allowing US forces to continue using an airbase in Moscow's former Soviet-era domain of Kyrgyzstan. 'Our American partners asked us to offer support in the transit of cargos. We are helping them. If Kyrgyzstan is ready to do this, this will only benefit the struggle with terrorism,' Medevedev told reporters in Namibia. But he qualified his remarks by saying that he expected the new agreement to reduce the number of US troops at Manas airbase -- something that would please Russia, which is uneasy about the presence of US troops in Central Asia. 'As I understand the decisions made by the Kyrgyz president and parliament, the essence was that the military base would cease its work and that its new function of transit would proceed on a new basis, without immunity for soldiers and without a large number of troops,' Medvedev said, quoted by RIA-Novosti. The US base at Manas is a key transit point for the support of international military efforts in Afghanistan, and its future had been in question since February when Kyrgystan ordered the base's closure. This week Washington signed a new agreement with Bishkek allowing the United States to continue using the base, while renaming it a 'transit centre' and increasing the rent that Washington pays for its use. A senior US official, speaking on condition on anonymity, told selfnews that the agreement allowed the United States to continue using Manas for sending military cargo to Afghanistan, much as it did previously. The loss of the base would have dealt a blow to US President Barack Obama's plan to intensify operations against the Taliban. Russia is widely believed to have been behind Kyrgyzstan's original decision to order the base's closure, although Moscow denies it. In its official reaction to the new US-Kyrgyz agreement, the Russian foreign ministry said Kyrgyzstan had the 'sovereign right' to negotiate such a deal. But an unnamed Russian diplomat told Kommersant newspaper that Kyrgyzstan had played a 'dirty trick.' Russia initially gave the go-ahead for US troops to open bases in ex-Soviet Central Asia following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, but the US troop presence later became an irritant to the Kremlin. At the same time, Russia has allowed US shipments of nonlethal supplies bound for Afghanistan to cross its territory. 