US, Romania announce plan for missile defense site

[May 03, 2011]  BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) -- Romania's president said Tuesday his country will host missile interceptors as part of a planned U.S. shield over Europe.

Traian Basescu announced that Bucharest had agreed to build the interceptor site at the Deveselu former air base near the Bulgarian border, in a remote agricultural region. Romania already had agreed to host the interceptors, but the location had not been decided.

The president, a staunch ally of the U.S., said it would give Romania "the highest security level in its history."

Basescu earlier met with U.S. undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher and she traveled to the site, some 125 miles (200 kilometers) southwest of Bucharest.

An average of 200 troops will be based at the site, which can host a maximum of 500, Basescu said. The base, which will remain under Romanian command, is a few kilometers (miles) outside Deveselu, a town of about 3,000.

He said the top secret site was approved late Monday by the country's Supreme Defense Council. Local officials were informed and gave their agreement, he said.

The Romanian site is part two of a four-part plan that the Obama administration outlined in 2009, when it shelved a Bush administration plan to use long-range interceptors based in Poland to counter a threat from Iran and North Korea. That plan was opposed by Russia, which worried that the system could target Russian warheads or undermine the Kremlin's deterrence strategy.

The Obama administration has said its plan -- designed to counter the threat of short-to-medium range missiles -- would be more effective and able to counter a threat from Iran earlier. But critics have said that the new plan caved in to Russian demands and have doubted whether the administration could build an effective shield in the timetable promised.

Basescu said the remote base was chosen because it fulfilled all of the 120 requirements needed to guarantee the full security of the system.

The U.S. administration's plan calls for placing land- and sea-based radars and interceptors in several European locations over the next decade and upgrading them over time. As the first part of the plan, the United States in March deployed to the Mediterranean the USS Monterey, a ship equipped to detect and shoot down missiles.

Each phase of the four-part plan calls for a more sophisticated and capable interceptor, culminating at the end of the decade with the deployment in Poland of more advanced interceptors that still are in development.

Basescu also said that the country's top defense body had approved a U.S. request to use an airport near the Black Sea air base of Mihail Kogalniceanu in eastern Romania for the transiting of troops and equipment to Iraq and Afghanistan and from Iraq to Europe.

Romania has about 1,700 troops serving in Afghanistan.

[Associated Press; By ALISON MUTLER]

Associated Press writers Alina Wolfe-Murray in Bucharest and Desmond Butler in Washington contributed to this report.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.