Military

DATE=10/18/04

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

TITLE= ROMANIA / US BASE

NUMBER=5-56010

BYLINE= ROGER WILKISON

DATELINE=BUCHAREST

HEADLINE: Romania Makes Pitch to Host US Military

INTRO: As the United States begins to re-position its military forces to better combat the terrorist threat and deal with crises in the Middle East and Central Asia, Romania is trying to convince U.S. defense officials to move American troops to a dormant airbase on the Black Sea. VOA's Roger Wilkison reports from Bucharest.

TEXT: When U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Romania last week for a NATO meeting, he was shown around a sprawling airbase near the port of Costanta in what reporters traveling with Mr. Rumsfeld described as a sales pitch.

Adjacent to the airbase is a huge, under-utilized army facility and, nearby, are training ranges for armor and infantry as well as an air defense training area. But a Romanian general who asked not to be identified says the complex's main attraction for the Americans is its strategic location on the Black Sea and its relative proximity to hot spots like Iraq.

The Pentagon is already familiar with the facility. About seven thousand U.S. troops moved through the Mihail Kogalniceanu airbase in February and March of last year on their way to Iraq, and about 35-hundred U.S. support personnel were stationed there temporarily. Three years ago, the Romanians allowed the Pentagon to use it as an air transport hub during the invasion of Afghanistan. The U.S. military spent more than three million dollars to upgrade the facility, but there are no U.S. troops there now.

The Romanian offer comes as the U.S. military seeks to create smaller military units that are more flexible and able to deploy quickly to various trouble spots. One goal of that strategy is to reduce the number of troops at large U.S. bases in such places as Germany and station them in smaller facilities in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Romania, a former communist state that became a member of NATO this year, but is still one of the poorest nations in Europe, stands to gain economically from any U.S. military presence. If U.S. troops were to relocate there, they would bring cash to a region that relies on revenue earned from summer tourism but struggles to get by in the off season.

Still, Romanians like defense analyst Cornel Codita, say the decision of the Romanian government to offer Washington the use of the complex is more political than economic. Mr. Codita says a U.S. presence in Romania will enhance his country's strategic alliance with the United States.

///CODITA ACT ONE///

"It was not so much the economics involved, because everybody knew that there would be, at most, a local impact.So the whole emphasis is much more on the political impact."

///END ACT///

In a show of support for the United States, Romania has dispatched nearly 600 troops to Afghanistan and another 700 to southern Iraq, where they are working alongside British forces. Mr. Codita says Romania sees its participation in those operations as being part of its duty as a U.S. ally

///CODITA ACT TWO///

"You need to be an ally in difficult times to be credible, and we are still building our credibility inside the alliance.This is not a case of countries which are wanting to go to war, which are willing to go. It's a case of how do you deal with a dictatorship which is threatening the whole equilibrium in a strategic position and is, by that effect, threatening the security of the entire international community."

///END ACT///

Not everybody is happy with the prospect of a U.S. military presence on the Black Sea. Russia, which is still angry at NATO's expansion into the Baltic states, is also skeptical about Washington's post-Cold War shift of its forces from western to eastern Europe. Speaking through an interpreter, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov signaled Moscow's continuing doubts about any such move after meeting with his NATO counterparts in the Romanian mountain resort of Poiana Brasov last week.

///IVANOV INTERPRETER ACT///

"The key question here, of course, is why such bases would be, in fact, installed. In order to counter real threats? That's one thing. But if they were mythical threats, that's another matter altogether."

///END ACT///

But Mr. Ivanov acknowledged that his country, too, is opening bases on its southern flank, in such countries as Tajikistan, because -in his words - that is where the threat to Russia comes from.

At the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, officials emphasize that the Pentagon has made no decision yet about taking up Romania's offer to use the facilities near Constanta. They say that decision is likely to be made next year. A Pentagon assessment team is to visit the facilities and similar installations in neighboring Bulgaria later this year.

If Washington does decide to use the Romanian base, those officials say, it would station no more than a few hundred U.S. troops there on a permanent basis but would increase the numbers for training exercises or in the event of future military operations. (signed)

NEB/RW/KBK/MEM