Germany: Gen James Jones, the most senior US commander in Europe, said yesterday that US troops could move from long-held bases in Germany to new sites in Romania and Bulgaria this year, as the Pentagon pushes its forces closer to the Middle East.
The announcement will have done little to calm fraying nerves in Russia, whose defence minister said yesterday it felt threatened by the thrust of Nato troops and weaponry into the former Soviet bloc.
Gen Jones, who visited Romanian and Bulgarian bases this week, said US forces could be deployed at as many as 10 sites in the Black Sea countries, as Washington swaps its Cold War-era positions for ones more useful in its global "war on terror".
"There's no reason why we couldn't start with deployments this year from our bases in Germany, to illustrate the. . . concept," said Gen Jones, who is also Nato's top military commander.
Washington's forces have already used bases and airfields in Romania and Bulgaria as staging posts for operations in the Middle East and Asia, and both countries provide troops to US-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The US is trying to readjust its global footprint in such a way as to make our forces more strategically feasible, flexible," Gen Jones commented in Romania earlier this week.
Bulgaria and Romania joined Nato last year and are keen to host US troops, believing it would raise their diplomatic and military profile, attract US investment and bolster their bids to join the EU in 2007.