u.s. bases from iraq to bulgaria

US to set up military bases in Bulgaria
March 25, 2006, The News International, Pakistan

SOFIA: Bulgaria and the United States have reached agreement on setting up US military bases in the former communist country, the Bulgarian negotiator and US ambassador said on Friday. Washington and Sofia "have reached a cooperation agreement on the possibility of using certain military sites," negotiator Lubomir Ivanov told a press conference.

The sites are to be the Novo Selo training base near Sliven in the east, the air bases of Bezmer near Yambol in the southeast and Graf Ignatievo near Plovdiv in the south and a warehouse near Aitos in the east, US ambassador John Beyrle said.

The agreement will be signed when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits Sofia at the end of April for a Nato conference, Ivanov said. The Bulgarian parliament will have to give its approval each time the bases are used for an attack on a third country, Defence Minister Veselin Bliznakov said, according to press reports.

The facilities are part of Washington’s wider strategy to shift troops from locations in western Europe further east to improve their reactivity to ongoing conflicts and potential trouble in the Middle East. Last December the United States signed a similar deal with Bulgaria’s northern neighbour Romania.

The Pentagon has announced plans to re-deploy between 60,000 and 70,000 men from Germany and South Korea in the next 10 years to new bases in eastern Europe, particularly in Romania and Bulgaria.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said the United States has no intention of establishing big bases in Eastern Europe like those it has maintained in Germany since the end of World War II.