Romanian News Agency
September 8, 2014
President Basescu: We will have NATO command structure in Romania
A NATO command structure will operate in the territory of Romania, President Traian Basescu announced after the alliance summit on Friday.
‘We will have a NATO command structure. In the documents that are not meant for the public, Romania features as a state that will offer facilities for a NATO command of acceptable dimensions’, Basescu explained.
…
‘Romania has two Romanian-American military bases, one in Kogalnicean [southeast] and one in Deveselu [southwest]. The rest of them are temporary garrisoning, exercises, field trainings, military maneuvers. The action plan enlarges the alternative and continuous military presence in Romania. On Romanian territory, we now have around 1,400 American troops, including 600 marines, elite soldiers. This effective will increase; it will be flexible, adapting to day-by-day situations. The important thing is that there’s a plan; the source of these troops and the fact that they can be deployed immediately and they are already equipped for any type of action are known,’ he explained.
Basescu added that Romania has the entire infrastructure ready to this effect.
‘It is a direct offer made by President Obama at the Summit: the creation of a training centre and naval exercises in the Black Sea, to be held with the navies of Romania and Bulgaria. This centre will be continuously supplied with US Navy ships. Today, actually, a destroyer entered the port of Constanta [southeastern Romania]. The Black Sea is acknowledged in the Summit documents as especially important for the Euro-Atlantic security; this is the broadest statement on the Black Sea,’ the president pointed out.
NATO messages – solidarity to members, freedom not for free
The NATO Summit foretold next missions after Afghanistan, and events over the past months created the conditions for the Alliance to act firstly as an organization fulfilling its fundamental mission of defending its members, President Traian Basescu declared on Friday.
‘This Summit has demonstrated that there’s no head of state or government not understanding the fundamental mission of NATO, that is defending its own members. I’d say that it’s a Summit of solidarity, one which revived the organization and sent a strong signal that upon any risk, no matter how small, for the members of the NATO alliance, the whole organization is ready to act on Article 5,’ Basescu asserted.
According to him, NATO’s second message was that freedom does not come free of charge.
Basescu also declared that Romania has reached all its goals at the NATO Summit in Wales.
‘We had a series of goals; all of them were met. It was a relatively lengthy inter-institutional work launched on the last year’s decision of CSAT [Supreme Council for Country's Defence] urging the Alliance to set up contingency plans for Romania. I’d like to thank our ambassador to NATO, who was our contact person and negotiator within NATO institutions. The Summit has adopted 20 documents, of which 5 are public and 15 not public, [but] secret,’ the president announced.
Black Sea to become NATO lake
Following the two days of the NATO summit in Newport, Wales, Romanian President Traian Basescu announced that Romania will host a regional command of the Alliance.
Following are some other comments he made to the media on Friday night.
‘I do not trust the truce signed today [between the government of Ukraine and the secessionists]. On the contrary, I do not see a favourable evolution for the territorial integrity of Ukraine. I’m afraid that pieces of its south are also going away into a larger Transnistria.’
NATO has called Romania to take over the guard of airports of Kandahar and Kabul in Afghanistan. The mission would require 400 soldiers. The president said Romania already contributes 200 troops, 200 instructors and 20 military police officers to Operation Resolute Support, and the new mission should be discussed in the Supreme Council for National Defence.
States highly dependent on Russian natural gas difficultly adapt to the need of sanctions against Russia, the president asserted. Asked to comment a bespoken remark he made some time ago, about the Black Sea being ‘a Russian lake’, he reminded his warning, ‘Gazprom [the big Russian natural gas supplier] is more efficient than the Red Army.’ As for the Black Sea, ‘We will turn it into a NATO lake.’
NATO did not commit to military support to Ukraine, but will create several mutual funds, with Romania coordinating a segment concerning the cyber security of Ukraine, Basescu also mentioned. Romania did not commit to supply weapons to Ukraine, he asserted, but specified ‘If it would have committed, I wouldn’t tell you; but it didn’t.’
The Republic of Moldova was included in two programmes, one for a platform of interoperability of Moldovan and NATO troops, and the other for building the country’s defence capabilities, which involves NATO member states, including Romania, participating in war games alongside the Moldovan army, the president explained.
Romania needs to allocate 2 percent of its GDP to defence, which would allow the country to ‘meet all expectations’. Basescu mentioned that Romania committed for this level for 2017, but the term could be advanced.
Source