"The type of facilities that we hope to be able to partner with in Bulgaria will affect the US navy, airforce, army and marines," Jones said.

"The important strategic location of Bulgaria in relation to waterways, airfields and open training facilities makes it very close to ideal," he added.

Bulgaria is expecting the US State Department and Congress to decide later this month or in February on stationing US troops in Bulgaria as part of a strategy of shifting troops based in Europe further east.

The aim is to move soldiers from positions chosen to cope with a possible Soviet invasion of Europe to a deployment better suited to the current preoccupations of terrorism and conflicts in the Middle East.

Jones is on an official two-day visit to Bulgaria and will on Wednesday visit three of the bases he plans to recommend, according to the Bulgarian defence ministry.

These are the Novo Selo base, in eastern Bulgaria, the Bezmer airbase near Yambol, to the southeast, and another in the Black Sea port city of Bourgas.

Novo Selo has been used for several years as a training centre for French and Italian army troops.

The Bulgarian army's chief of staff, General Nikola Kolev, said Tuesday that the Graf Ignatievo airbase, near Plovdiv in the south, the naval base at Atia and the airport of Sarafovo, in Bourgas, were possibilities to be proposed to the US Congress.

Sarafovo was used by the United States to station refueling aircraft during operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Defense Minister Nikolai Svinarov told AFP in an interview in December that an eventual permanent deployment of US troops to Bulgaria "would involve up to 3,000 people who would be stationed in one or two bases".

Jones stressed that: "We are not talking about establishing uniquely US bases. This is a partnership where these will be Bulgarian bases we will be privileged to be a tenant of."

The right-wing newspaper Standard wrote Monday that Jones might choose up to five bases to be used not only by the United States but also for stationing NATO troops.

In December, Vice Defence Minister Ilko Dimitrov said Novo Selo and Sarafovo airbase might become US bases while NATO was interested in Graf Ignatievo and Bezmer.

But Jones declined to name any potential NATO bases.

"There is much more potential here involving NATO than we are currently discussing," he said.