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| THE AMERICAN MILITARY IN ROMANIA |
| (2007-05-03) |
| Last updated: 2007-05-03 17:32 EET |
Parliament has approved that around 3,000 American military personnel will be stationed on Romania's territory for 10 years, under an agreement signed in December 2005 in Bucharest by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Romanian authorities. They will be deployed in bases made available by the Romanian authorities in the following locations: on the Black Sea coast at Babadag and Mihail Kogalniceanu; on the Danube at Smirdan; and in the Carpathian Mountains at Cincu.
The Mihail Kogalniceanu air base was already used in 2003 as a take-off point for American aircraft which participated in the Iraq operations. The American military will arrive from bases in the United States and Europe and the military personnel will be regularly rotated. When the American military's deployment was put to the vote in Parliament, the populists from the Greater Romania Party abstained and the representative of the Russian minority in Parliament voted against. The Greater Romania Party Vice-President Lucian Bolcas explains his party's reservations:
“I think it's absolutely anachronistic for a European Union member state to ask, in 2007, for foreign troops to be deployed on its territory, This is a very serious matter, because in this way Romania would turn into a buffer-state between two big nuclear powers, bearing the consequences of a policy which is not its own”.
Moreover, the Greater Romania Party is dissatisfied with the fact that the Treaty fails to provide for consultations with the Romanian Government in the event of attacks from the Romanian territory against a third country. In response, PM Calin Popescu Tariceanu has given assurances that all the operations from these bases will be based on consultations and joint decisions.
Moreover, the Prime Minister sees some benefits for Romania from the stationing of the American military:
“Our privileged military relationship with the authorities in Washington will bring about the deepening of bilateral cooperation in many fields and will instil greater confidence on the part of the business environment. The implications of this decision will translate into a growing political dialogue at top level between the administrations of the two states, and also in a European context, through Romania asserting itself as an important player, with an active role in deepening the trans-Atlantic relationship”.
This idea is shared by US Ambassador to Bucharest, Nicholas Taubman. In his opinion, both Romania and the United States stand to gain from the presence of Romanian troops alongside American forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans. Romania’s forces – Taubman said – are growing accustomed to working together and gaining experience which can be put to use in the future. It's a process of transformation and modernisation in practice, not only on paper.
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2025-04-03
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