A total of 3500 US troops will be deployed in Bulgaria in 2007 as part of the Pentagon's plan to establish new mobile bases in Eastern Europe. About 2300 US servicemen are expected to go to Romania in 2006 as part of the same Pentagon restructuring plan. The general command of the Bulgarian and Romanian troops will be in Romania. Sofia and Washington are currently discussing the details of the deployment. Negotiations about US-Bulgaria joint installations started on October 6 2005, although Bulgaria had agreed in 2003 to host bases.

Bezmer airport, near Yambol, and the manoeuvering training ground Novo Selo, near Sliven, both in south-eastern Bulgaria, are the two locations confirmed so far. A second air base at Graf Ignatievo, near Plovdiv in south-central Bulgaria, is still being negotiated. In an interview with The Sofia Echo, US embassy deputy chief of mission Jeffrey Levine said that "(US) interest remains (in) Novo Selo and Bezmer for our primary training activities, although the final agreement may include additional facilities that could be used in support of this training or as appropriate for other activities."

The troops will be deployed on a rotational principle, US ambassador John Beyrle said on March 7. Both Bezmer and Novo Selo were chosen because they had quick links to the seaport of Bourgas and the border with Turkey, Levine told Bulgarian media last year.

The joint military facilities would be Bulgarian - the Bulgarian national colours would be raised over the bases and the soldiers will be commanded by Bulgarian generals, Beyrle said.

"We are well aware of your apprehensions but, we hope, we will be good neighbors and guests," he said. Beyrle was speaking to Kiril Todorov, mayor of Yambol, and Georgi Georgiev, mayor of Tundja, which is next to Yambol.

Apart from deploying troops, the US will use the port of Bourgas for the transportation of military equipment. At the start of negotiations last year, the two parties agreed that the US would not be allowed to use its military bases in Bulgaria to attack other countries, unless Bulgaria gives its permission. The US will maintain relatively small contingents and training facilities, mainly for hosting bilateral and international drills, Interior Minister Roumen Petkov said in February this year. US troops would also not remain permanently in Bulgaria. Various arguments - such as economic benefits, higher security for Bulgaria, investments in the infrastructure and improvement of the interoperability with the US partners - were also mentioned by public officials last year.

The negotiations were not finalised by the end of 2005 and were postponed till spring 2006. On March 3, Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin said that the status of the US armed forces is a priority in this year's discussions. Next came locations and installations.

"Although various alternatives are being discussed, nothing is final yet," Kalfin said when asked about the Graf Ignatievo air base.

The deal would probably be finalised in April, Petkov  said.US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice is expected to arrive in Bulgaria for the signing of the bilateral agreement.
On April 27 and 28 2006, Kalfin will host an informal meeting of 26 foreign ministers of NATO member countries under the chairmanship of NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. A total of about 800 people are expected to participate.

In November, more than a month after the negotiations started, the National Council for Peace (NCP, also known as the Bulgarian Аnti-Fascist Аlliance) and the Bulgarian Social Forum organised a protest in Sofia against the US bases. Both organisations are part of the rather fuzzy Bulgarian anti-global and anti neo-liberal movement. About 500 people took part in it, according to unofficial sources. The event received almost no media coverage, nor did its peaceful procession from the National Palace of Culture to the Ivan Vazov National Theatre on January 24 2006.

A national anti-US forum on February 25 followed the demonstration. Renowned international scholars, like Ramsey Clarke, US attorney general under past president Lyndon B. Johnson, attended the forum. Participants signed a declaration that was sent to the President, the Cabinet, and  Parliament. Again, it got little or no media coverage, although unofficial websites said that hundreds of people had been present at the forum and the demonstration. Most of them, however, were in their 50s and older.

Among reasons for this is the presence of ultra-right nationalist party Ataka MPs in the ranks of the NCP and at the February 25 forum. Notable among them is former Ataka MP Mincho Hristov, who proposed an anti-US force deployment bill in February 2006, along with two other Ataka MPs. Hristov was later expelled from Ataka for systematic violation of the rules of the party, insults to Ataka members and inconsistencies between his views and the views of other Ataka MPs. The bill itself was rejected almost unanimously with 18 ayes, 120 nays and two abstentions.

The text of the February 25 declaration was identical to the reasoning for the anti-US force motion from the beginning of February. It said that "the deployment of US military bases directly violates the sovereignty of Bulgaria"; that such bases "can be used to strike against third countries"; that "their presence  increases the risk of terrorist acts against Bulgarian citizens and civilian and military facilities"; and that "possibilities exist to test and use new types of armament and ammunition, which may include depleted uranium".

Ataka MPs also claimed that the vast majority of Bulgarian citizens did not want US military bases in Bulgaria, and the refusal to hold a referendum on the matter was an instance of ignoring public opinion.

Despite these comments, support for US deployment, both in Parliament and among the Bulgarian populace, appears to be much stronger than the protest against them. Bulgaria was the first non-NATO country to create an Atlantic Club, which later became an echelon in the whole of Europe, as the then-foreign minister Solomon Pasi said in an interview with Kapital weekly in 2004. It was again Bulgaria, Passi said, that created the idea of multinational military forces in South East Europe in 1994. Bulgaria joined NATO in March 2004. Ideas to host US bases were first heard in 2003.

The unpopularity of US bases, where there is such, is largely due to poor information on the status of negotiations between Sofia and Washington, Georgi Georgiev, mayor of Tundja, said in an earlier interview with The Sofia Echo. All areas around the Bezmer and Novo Selo bases share one certainty - that  US bases will improve infrastructure and generate jobs and investment.

The US would invest 30 million euro in the improvement of the infrastructure of the Bulgarian military bases,  Beyrle said on March 7. A reconstruction of the Bezmer base is scheduled for March 2008-October 2009.

"The environment protection requirements will be strictly observed in both bases," said Beyrle.

Concerns about the environment, however, were largely put aside, as earlier interviews The Sofia Echo conducted showed. So was the question of Bulgaria's eventual reduced sovereignty. People were mostly interested in the economic benefits a US presence would bring to their towns.

In January 2006, the mayor of a village close to Novo Selo, Emil Enchev, told Bulgarian newspaper Standart that "the Government should hurry up with the negotiations.  I think we are very slow and the Romanians have already taken the lead". He said that an opinion poll he conducted in the village showed that over 70 per cent of its people wanted a US military base. Only some elderly people did not.

The reluctance of older people was explained by Georgi Dedov, mayor of Kotel, which hosts the Novo Selo base. He said that "some old people are not ready to accept foreign troops" because they were used to training there with Warsaw Pact countries 20 years ago.

"They want it to be used by the Bulgarian army only," he said.