Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

US Ties up New Base Structuring in Europe

Proximity to oil fields considered in U.S. military base settlement plan. No matter how often our government admits this is an Oil War Americans just do not get it.

-Am

The US will begin negotiations concerning new "strategic partnerships" that will assist the redeployment of its military bases.

General Charles Wald, Deputy Commander for the European Command, told a foreign policy symposium in the Senate that the US needed to change its military settlement plan in foreign lands. Wald said that the Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Black Sea region of Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, in the Southern Caucuses, because of their proximity to oil fields, drug smuggling, terrorism and instability, were the "'new geopolitical hot points".

General Wald noted that the US was not looking for a permanent base in Southern Caucasian countries, rather, "strategic partnerships." American troops settled in Germany could be temporarily shifted to some countries including Turkey. Last month, an article in The New York Times claimed that the US planned to move 72 F-16 planes from Germany to Incirlik Base in Eastern Turkey. The story was denied. 84 percent of 120,000 American troops in Europe are in Germany.



07.27.2004
Washington, aa





http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&trh=20040727&hn=10898