He was giving first details about a project that would be part of a historic shift of US forces in Europe from a Cold War posture to a deployment better suited to the current age of terrorism and conflicts in the Middle East.

"The way I see things is we're talking about one or two bases and the total amount of deployed would amount to 2-3,000 people," Svinarov told AFP in an interview.

The US embassy in Sofia refused to comment.

Bulgaria is expecting Washington to decide early next year on setting up US military bases in the former communist country, Svinarov said.

Bulgaria has already set up a working group for negotiations.

"What we are talking about is small bases," Svinarov said.

The bases would be "totally different compared to the US bases that have been located in Western Europe and more particularly in Germany after World War II."

They would not be "base towns and base cities" where tens of thousands of troops stood by for decades until the fall in 1989 of the Berlin Wall to parry a Soviet invasion of Western Europe but rather staging areas with military personnel being rotated regularly.

Svinarov said Bulgaria, which joined NATO in March 2004, was important since it was "the eastern boundary of NATO right now and very soon Bulgaria is going to be the eastern boundary of the European Union," as Bulgaria hopes to join the EU in 2007.

Svinarov said the United States had gained experience in using the Sarafovo airfield near Burgas in the east during the Iraq war last year.

The main task for these bases was "providing support in air-to-air refueling of airplanes in the region of the Black Sea," with only about 500 US military personnel on the ground in Bulgaria, Svinarov said.

He said the relatively small numbers to be involved in a permanent US base would not be a "very powerful economic contribution" to the Bulgarian economy.

But the opportunities it would give for joint training with US forces would be a chance to increase Bulgarian "interoperability" with other NATO troops.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Sofia Tuesday that the Bulgarian people should be proud of the sacrifices their country was making in military deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Powell said Bulgaria would benefit since it was showing it was a good US ally as well as "a partner in broader alliances such as NATO and soon, hopefully, the European Union."

Parliament said in December that Bulgaria "supports the redeployment of American forces in military bases abroad and approves of the consultations already begun on the issue between the United States and Bulgaria".

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