More US forces will be based in eastern Europe

A dramatic shift of American military forces from bases in Germany to locations in "new" Europe, including Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and Hungary, is being brought forward after the war in Iraq.

According to reports in the US, the 17,000-strong 1st Armoured Division, most of which was sent to Iraq from Germany, will not return there. Meanwhile, Romania's Defence Minister, Ioan Mircea Pascu, has announced that talks will begin shortly with Washington on the deployment of more American forces to bases in his country.

The decision to scale down American forces in Germany, as well as Pentagon plans to remove troops from Saudi Arabia, underlines the extent to which the Iraq war has changed Washington's military priorities. The aftermath of the conflict is being used to help reshape the international security framework and mount the biggest US military reshuffle since the Second World War.

Europe is used to playing host to more than 112,000 American troops, 80 per cent of whom have been based in Germany. But with the German and French governments singled out for criticism by Washington for their opposition to the war in Iraq, the Pentagon seems intent on shifting many of its forces eastwards.

Former communist countries which have been accepted into Nato's ranks not only offered political support for Washington's war effort but can provide strategic bases.

The pattern likely to emerge is of a dispersal of limited numbers of American troops to several, smaller-scale centres in Eastern Europe, with some soldiers returning home. That would fit with the objective of Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, of creating leaner, more mobile and faster forces.

The senior US commander in Europe, General James Jones, has called for the creation of a "family of bases" that can go "from being cold to warm to hot if you need them".

This blueprint would permit the periodic expansion of forces when necessary while averting a political problem with Moscow. As part of its deal with Russia over the expansion of Nato, Washington agreed not to set up new military bases in the former communist countries. At a meeting this week at Nato headquarters in Brussels the Americans said they will honour this commitment and that any deployments to the former Soviet bloc would require only minimal improvements to existing infrastructure. The purpose would be to allow joint training exercises, a senior American official said.

Diplomats say some of the bases which are likely to play host to US troops have already been upgraded as a condition of entry into Nato, and could accommodate more troops.

European diplomats do not expect the US entirely to abandon its German bases, keeping a presence, for example, at Ramstein near Frankfurt.