US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Romanian counterpart signed a historic pact establishing the first US military bases in a former Warsaw Pact country.
The US takeover of bases near the Black Sea -- putting US forces within closer striking distance of potential targets in the Middle East and Central Asia -- would help "take terrorists off the streets" and save lives around the world, Rice said on Tuesday.
She called Romania -- beset by allegations that it hosted a secret CIA prison -- "a strong friend with whom we share common values."
Rice, hailing Romania as one of the US' "best allies," signed the agreement with Romanian Foreign Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu.
"We have a great committed partner in Romania to make a more peaceful world," Rice said before a signing ceremony in the ornate Cotroceni Palace.
"This is a symbol of burgeoning and brightening relations," she said.
President Traian Basescu, meanwhile, denied allegations that Romania hosted a covert CIA detention center and said all facilities would be open to scrutiny to prove the ex-communist country has nothing to hide.
"There was no such thing," he said, calling allegations based on aircraft movements "baseless."
New York-based Human Rights Watch, citing flight records of planes it said had direct or indirect CIA links, has pointed to Romania's Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base as among suspicious sites that may have hosted a secret prison. Top Romanian officials and the Pentagon have denied it.
The air base is among several military installations over which the US will assume control under the agreement signed on Tuesday.
Other installations in the agreement include Babadag in the Black Sea inland region, Cincu in the mountains of central Romania and Smardan in eastern Romania, which will be used for all types of weapons training.
There will be 100 personnel based in Mihail Kogalniceanu, and up to 1,500 rotational troops will use the base at any one time, according to the US State Department. The bases will be small and rotational.
Russian legislation
Meanwhile, Rice yesterday expressed concern over restrictive draft Russian legislation regulating non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
"We hope the importance of NGOs to a stable, democratic environment would be understood by the Russian Federation," Rice said at a joint news conference in Kiev with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.
The bill on non-commercial organizations, which has been approved by the Kremlin-controlled Duma in the first of three required readings, would require local branches of foreign NGOs to reregister as de-facto Russian entities, subject to stricter financial and legal restrictions.
Critics say the bill is another step in the Kremlin's effort to tighten control over society following the abolition of popular elections for governors in Russia's far-flung regions, effective state takeover of television and an increasingly tame parliament.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS