AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
ROME: The United States will close its Maddalena military base in Sardinia in the Mediterranean, used for nuclear submarines, by September 2008, a spokesman for the island's authorities told AFP Wednesday.
“The Italian defense ministry told us today (Wednesday) that the United States would leave the Maddalena base by September 1, 2008,” Umberto Cocco, spokesman for the regional presidency, told AFP.
He said that the US State Department had informed the ministry of its decision several days ago.
The defense ministry said the United States had decided to close the base “in line with new geo-strategic demands concerning security in the Mediterranean, different from 30 years ago”.
The US presence on the Maddalena archipelago, one of Italy's most beautiful natural sites situated near the French island of Corsica, has provoked increasing complaints from environmentalists.
Several studies have showed uranium and plutonium pollution in water off Santo Stefano, an islet that is a port of call for US nuclear submarines.
When a nuclear propulsion submarine hit a reef near the islands on October 25, 2003, without officially causing serious damage, opposition to the base rose in Corsica and Sardinia.
Sardinia organised an unsuccessful referendum to call for the base to close in 1988.
In November 2005, the defense minister of the former government of Silvio Berlusconi, Antonio Martino, announced the forthcoming departure of US forces, without giving a specific date.
The US navy has been using the Maddalena archipelago for 33 years as a home base in the Mediterranean for its nuclear submarines.
The base was built in 1972, in the middle of the Cold War, following a secret bilateral US-Italian deal.
Some 3,000 troops and their families are currently based there.
