A top US lawmaker expressed "concern" on Wednesday about unrest in Bahrain, citing close, long-time good relations including as a base for US warships operating throughout the region.
Republican Representative Todd Akin, who heads the House Armed Services subcommittee with oversight over US naval power, told AFP that "certainly we are concerned" about demonstrations demanding political change in the Gulf kingdom.
"That concern, to some degree, is focused on the fact that we're not quite sure what all of these different destabilized political situations are going to mean," Akin said, amid turmoil in strategically vital places like Egypt.
"Certainly Bahrain is important to our interests, as a port. And there have been good relations that we've enjoyed with them in the past," said Akin, who represents a district in the heartland US state of Missouri.
"Those are all things that cause us to want to pay close attention to what's going on," said the lawmaker, who served in the US Army as an engineer.
His comments came as thousands of Bahrainis chanted for a change of regime in the pro-Western Gulf kingdom at the burial of a second protester killed in clashes with police.
After the funeral, large crowds poured on to the capital Manama's Pearl Square, which demonstrators occupied on Tuesday with some erecting tents for the night like their counterparts on Cairo's Tahrir Square whose 18 straight days of protests triggered the fall of former president Hosni Mubarak.
The largest Shiite opposition bloc, meanwhile, said its MPs would not end a boycott of parliament until measures are taken to establish a real constitutional monarchy in the Shiite-majority country ruled by a Sunni royal family.
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