IRAQ-PORTUGAL: Azores a Key Stop on U.S. Route to Baghdad

By Mario de Queiroz Reprint | | Print |

Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Mar 10 2003 (IPS) - The Lajes air base, in Portugal’s Azores Islands, is playing a prominent role in the movement of U.S. troops and war material on their way to the Persian Gulf region to hem in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The Luso-U.S. base on Terceira, one of the nine islands of the Azores archipelago, is in fact an immense aircraft carrier anchored in the Atlantic, halfway between Europe and North America.

Portugal’s Prime Minister José Manuel Durao on Jan 31 authorised the United States to use the Lajes base, underscoring his support for a potential military attack against Iraq.

The movement of troops and weaponry through Lajes began quietly in early February. But personnel and combat aircraft traffic intensified last week, with the arrival of two-dozen A-10 strafing airplanes.

Fifteen aircraft for in-air refuelling, KC-135, land and take off every day at Terceira, after filling the tanks of the air fleet crossing the Atlantic on the way to the Persian Gulf region.

Meanwhile, the base sleeping quarters for U.S. soldiers were expanded by 600 beds for pilots and crew in transit to the Middle East.

Most of the 60,000 residents of Terceira, an island of 405 square km, welcome the U.S. presence because the base provides jobs for civilians, and increases retail business and demand for entertainment, especially in the capital, Angra do Heroismo.

Alongside Denmark, Spain, Britain and Italy, Portugal one of Washington’s most faithful allies in the European Union. However, a poll conducted by the Catholic University in late January found that 87 percent of the Portuguese people surveyed were opposed to a war against Iraq.

The importance the U.S. government of George W. Bush places on Lajes in the current climate of tensions became evident in late February when Washington announced it would invest 19 million dollars to improve the base’s aircraft provisioning system.

Although the United States has its own means to manage its air fleet, doing so at Lajes is less expensive, using the base as a stopping point between U.S. territory and the bases of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in continental Europe.

Washington’s military strategy has passed through the Azores since June 1946, when the United States occupied the base built by Britain during World War II.

And U.S. forces have made use of the base more recently, during the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, and the NATO bombings against Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995 and Serbia in 1999.

While the United States values Lajes as a strategic base, relations between Washington and Lisbon – since the agreement to occupy the island in 1946 – have run into some obstacles.

The first cracks appeared in the 1960s, when U.S. president John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) began to question the Portuguese dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira e Salazar and to pressure Lisbon to grant independence to its colonies.

While London recognised the independence of India, Portugal insisted on holding onto its Indian colonies of Goa, Diu and Damao, until being expelled by the army of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1961.

The same occurred in Africa, as France, Britain and Belgium ceded their colonial enclaves, the unyielding Oliveira e Salazar kept Portugal’s grip on Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe, with the consequent beginning of anti-colonial war (1961-1974).

Furthermore, Portugal was the only NATO member not governed by a democratic parliamentary system. On the contrary, after World War II a corporativist regime was installed, ”O Estado Novo”, inspired on Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime in Italy (1922- 1943).

But the strategic interests of the United States and of NATO took precedence, and they pragmatically accepted Portugal as a good ally during the Cold War against the socialist bloc.

With the death of Oliveira Salazar in 1969 and his replacement by a ”more liberal” dictator, Marcello Caetano, a period of greater tranquillity began and no more was said about Lajes.

The leftist military coup of April 1974 ousted Caetano, and the revolutionary period extended until November 1975, awakening concern in Washington about the Azores military base.

The United States was worried about the Portuguese government, led by pro-communist Gen. Vasco Gonçalves, and about the armed forces, whose ”strongman” was the extreme leftist Maj. Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho.

To the U.S. Defence Department, the presence within NATO of the Portuguese armed forces, with their leftist leanings, represented a ”Trojan horse”.

The U.S. administration of Gerald Ford (1974-1977) began drafting plans to dismantle the base at Lajes.

But those plans were never completed because in November 1975 sectors of the Portuguese military aligned with social-democrats established power within the armed forces, ending internal tensions.

At that point, political, diplomatic and military relations with the United States and with NATO began to normalise.

According to expert Nuno Simas in his book ”Azores: Secret Stories”, published in 2000, only recently has Portugal’s participation – through Lajes – in the nuclear strategy of the United States and NATO come to light.

In the midst of a secret, ”in which everything continues somewhat in the shadows, indications accumulate that atomic weapons were stored in the Azores during the Cold War to respond to a surprise attack by the Soviet Union,” says the historian.

According to Simas, Oliveira Salazar gave the green light in 1951 to use Lajes to launch nuclear counterattacks ”against countries on the other side of the iron curtain.”

Two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, defence minister Eurico de Melo admitted that Lisbon had allowed the storage of nuclear weapons, because ”Portugal had to meet its responsibilities.”

But today the enemy is different, says Prime Minister Durao, and Portugal’s duty is ”to support, without reservations, our allies’ fight against terrorism, the scourge of the new century.”

As such, the use of Lajes to intervene in Iraq is important, said the leader recently, because ”when the dictator Saddam Hussein is dethroned, it will be a great day for Europe and for the world.”