ON the threshold of the main tourism season, 16 military aircraft and 400 troops are already based at Sarafovo Airport. The last two KC-10A tanker jets landed on Friday, 400 kilometers east of Sofia. Eighteen US tanker planes are authorised to use Sarafovo Airport, all of which came from McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey.

About 10 US Hercules C-130 cargo aircraft and six MH-47 helicopters landed in the past two weeks at the air base. Tour operators, hoteliers and locals have expressed concern about the eventual location of an air base there, which will create a decline in the present good tourism figures.

The Bulgarian Government granted the US official request for airstrips, troops and military bases for a possible attack on Iraq in February, as they had for air refuelling during the war in Afghanistan, and enabled Sarafovo airfield to be used by US troops. Sarafovo was initially planned to host 18 tanker jets to be filled with jet fuel from the LUKoil Neftochim oil refinery in Bourgas. Airport authorities said that the air base had the capacity to operate only five planes at a time. The jets will be used to refuel aircraft in case of a military attack against Iraq.

Jason Smith, press attache of the 409th Expeditionary Air Base Group said that Bulgaria is a friend of the United States and that 'the US never forgets its friends'. The Bulgarian news agency quoted him as saying that there is no danger for the citizens in the region of Bourgas.

Women from Sarafovo issued a declaration to the National Assembly, the Premier and the Foreign Affairs Minister saying that they disapproved of the country's involvement in a new war.

"The protest meeting of residents of Sarafovo on Bulgaria's southern Black Sea coast is ungrounded and politically motivated," Foreign Mi-nister Solomon Passi said.