Romania’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday denied an alleged transfer of US nuclear weapons stationed in Turkey to Romania.
“The Foreign Affairs Ministry firmly rejects these pieces of information,” the official Agerpres news agency reported the ministry as saying.
EurActiv.com reported on Thursday, citing two anonymous “independent sources,” that the United States had started transferring nuclear weapons stationed in Turkey to Romania, against the background of worsening relations between Washington and Ankara.
According to the sources, the transfer of “20-plus nukes” has been very challenging in technical and political terms, yet the US-Turkey relations had deteriorated so much following the coup that Washington no longer trusted Ankara to host the weapons.
The weapons are being moved to the Deveselu air base, a newly-opened ballistic missile defense site in southern Romania, one of the sources said.
In a recent report, US think-tank Stimson Center said that some 50 nuclear weapons are being stored at Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base.