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| Europe |
| US Bases in Bulgaria in 2 Years? |
| 2003-12-21 |
| (EFL, but the original’s not much bigger) The actual building of US bases in Bulgaria could come into effect in no less that two years, Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Solomon Passy said Sunday. Currently, US experts are consulting their NATO partners on the issue, and those consultations are most likely to continue in the beginning of next year, Passy explained. He also pointed out that the decision for stationing bases in Bulgaria was a serious one, thus required consideration. On December 19, Bulgaria’s Parliament expressed support for the future stationing of US bases in a declaration approved by 200 MPs. Only 3 MPs from the left-wing opposition "Coalition for Bulgaria" opposed it. The document vows Parliament’s support for the US process of relocation of military bases abroad... Poland, Bulgaria and Romania are now favourite destinations for hosting US bases. |
| Posted by:Dan (not Darling) |
| #1 Rather than include my personal ramblings in the original posting, I thought this part more worthy of a "comment" posting. I applaud the Bulgarians for their apparent enthusiasm, but this and the recent increase in "chatter" stokes my constant Bulgaria's Kozloduy Nuclear Plant has six Soviet-built reactors. Most of the concern involves reactors 1 and 2, which went online in the mid-Seventies. Features of reactors 1 and 2 that are below Western standards include, but are not limited to: quality and construction of building materials, operating systems, personnel training, emergency core-cooling systems, and auxiliary water-feed systems. Reactor 1, considered the most dangerous, was intermittently closed during the Nineties under intense international pressure, but it's been back on the grid since January of '98. Kozloduy provides 40% of Bulgaria's electrical energy, and the energy sector itself accounts for 15% of Bulgaria's GDP, making Kozloduy an economic and industrial sacred cow. The European Union has offered millions of euros in technical assistance and direct aid to Kozloduy over the last decade, but the plant won't be shut down anytime soon. An agreement reached in '98 between Kozloduy's managers and the EU promised to gradually phase out reactors 1 and 4 by '05, but little has since been done to meet this deadline (other than postponing it to '06). Kozloduy is near the Danube River (the Romanian/Bulgarian border) and less than eighty miles east of the Serbian border. Fallout from a core breach at Kozloduy (potentially four times greater than Chernobyl) would affect all of southern and eastern Europe but mostly three countries: * Romania (a supporter of the WoT) * Bulgaria (ditto, only more so), and * Serbia (fought Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo during the Nineties) Best of all, an 18-mile no-fly zone around the reactor is routinely violated. Keeping in mind AlQ's fondness for using aircraft as weapons, I'd start keeping an extra-close eye on all west- and north-bound flights out of Istanbul, Damascus, etc. |
| Posted by: Dan (not Darling) 2003-12-21 11:11:43 PM |