Cash Flows to Romanian Village Hosting NATO HQ

For over ten years, the local authorities in Cincu, a village in the mountains of central Romania, said they did not have the money to refurbish the main road connecting their village to the surroundings.

But, this week they found some 116,000 lei (27,000 euro) from the budget to plug potholes and fix the road, battered by harsh winters.

The sudden decision came just before NATO on Tuesday said it would relocate its Allied Joint Force Command, based in Naples, to Cincu for 12 days in June.

The temporary relocation is designed to support a NATO exercise that will involve 1,000 troops from 21 NATO states.

The deployment to Romania had been planned for a year, as the NATO alliance struggles to adjust to new security challenges coming from the south and east.

The exercise will be conducted in the context of increased NATO worries over Russia's military involvement in the area surrounding Romania.

"We are concerned with the deployment of advanced missile systems into Crimea by the Russians and the deployment of advanced fighter aircraft and the increase of forces there, which we think threaten the security of the Black Sea," US Navy Admiral Mark Ferguson III said during a two-day visit to Bucharest.

Cincu is Romania's largest military shooting range, sited some 180 kilometers northwest of Bucharest.

In recent years, the US Army has invested in the military base, setting up new training facilities for various types of troops.

The Humanitarian Assistance Center of the European Command in the US, through the Defense Cooperation Office at the US Embassy, has also sponsored the renovation of the medical clinic in the village, with some $92,000 US.

Romania is one of NATO's firmest supporters among the ex-Communist...