Surprise at size of US nuclear store

WASHINGTON - More than a dozen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States still maintains 480 nuclear weapons in Europe, more than twice as many as previously believed.

The Washington-based Natural Resources Defence Council says the weapons are under US control and stored at eight bases in six countries - Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Turkey.

The weapons are all gravity bombs. Three hundred are fitted to be dropped by US planes and 180 by planes from local air forces.

In Britain 110 weapons are said to be stored at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, home to 5000 US military personnel and three squadrons of F-15 aircraft.

Germany is host to the largest number, with 150 kept at three bases. A further 90 apiece are in Italy and Turkey, and 20 apiece in Belgium and the Netherlands.

The report, compiled from documents obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act, military literature, and material from other sources, is in sharp contrast with official indications that US nuclear weapons in Europe total no more than 200 or so, after "significant reductions".

It challenges the entire rationale for keeping a nuclear arsenal of any size in Europe. Pentagon officials say the weapons are part of Nato's "strategic deterrence mission" in the region, hinting that they could be employed to counter a non-conventional threat from countries such as Iran or Syria.

But the Natural Resources Defence Council, a privately financed arms control group, dismisses this reasoning as "obsolete and vague".

It argues that long-range nuclear missiles based in the US render Europe-based ones superfluous. The presence of the latter is if anything counter-productive - "an irritant" in relations with Russia, and a factor undermining Washington's efforts to prevent countries such as Iran from acquiring nuclear arms.

- INDEPENDENT