TEMPO.CO, Bucharest - The United States will deploy F-16 fighter jets to Romania this month as part of planned joint exercises amidst rising tensions in neighboring Ukraine following Russia's annexation of Crimea, the NATO member's defense minister said. Earlier on March, a US destroyer conducted naval exercises with Romania and Bulgaria in the Black Sea, a few hundreds kilometers from Crimea.
"American F-16 jets will be in Romania ... because we have planned joint exercises in Romania's air space during this time, and they will stay for a pretty long period," Romania's Defense Minister Mircea Dusa stated, as quoted by Mediafax news agency.
Last week, the Pentagon said that it would send 175 new troops to a Romanian base near the Black Sea as part of plans to bolster crisis response force. President Barack Obama has stated that NATO needs to boost its presence in eastern European countries, in relation to the recent Crimea dispute.
Dusa said that Bucharest had "other requests to our American partner and to NATO" over deploying squadrons in Romania until the country's own F-16 fleet becomes operational in 2017. Romania's leftist government approved a plan last year to buy second-hand F-16 fighter jets from Portugal, in order to match NATO air force standards and phased out its outdated Soviet-made MiG-21s.
REUTERS | ABDUL MANAN