US reportedly transferring nuclear weapons from Turkish airbase to Romania
Romania's foreign ministry denies it has accepted any US nuclear weapons.
The United States has begun transferring its stockpile of nuclear weapons from the Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey to Romania, according to a report by the independent Euractiv website on Thursday.
The reported move comes just days after a Washington think tank claimed the US's stockpile of nuclear weapons at Incirlik were at-risk of seizure by "terrorists or other hostile forces," and questioned "whether the US could have maintained control of the weapons" following a failed coup attempt in Turkey last month.
The report by Euractiv said that the transfer of the nuclear warheads to the US base at Deveselu in Romania has posed both technical and political challenges, and has especially angered nearby Russia.
"It's not easy to move 20 plus nukes," the Euractiv report quotes an unidentified source as saying.
Romania's foreign ministry denies it has accepted any US nuclear weapons.
"[The] Romanian MFA firmly dismisses the information you referred to," a Romanian foreign ministry spokesman told EurActiv.
"There are no thoughts, no plans to take this direction. We can only call this information speculative," Romania's Defense Minister Mihnea Motoc said Thursday, according to Turkey's Daily Sabah.
Critics have long been alarmed by America's estimated stockpile of about 50 nuclear bombs at Incirlik in southern Turkey, just 70 miles (110 kilometers) from the border with war-torn Syria, but the issue took on fresh urgency last month after the attempted coup in Turkey, during which the base's Turkish commander was arrested on suspicion of complicity in the plot.
"From a security point of view, it's a roll of the dice to continue to have approximately 50 of America's nuclear weapons stationed at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey," the report said.
Incirlik is a vital base for the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, with the strategically located facility affording drones and warplanes fast access to IS targets.
(Staff with agencies)