The U.S. is preparing a security strategy for the Black Sea and Romania wants to play a key role, Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu said.
Bucharest is pushing Washington to send more troops to the region, but says better infrastructure is needed to transport them.
The U.S. may provide financial backing to a rail link between the Polish port of Gdansk on the Baltic Sea and Constanta on the Black Sea. It may also finance a highway connecting the north and south of the region that would enable troops and equipment to be transported, the foreign minister told Digi24.
Romania has made the request in the context of which it calls growing Russian aggression on NATO’s eastern flank.
NATO members Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey are Black Sea nations which form the military alliance’s eastern coastal border.
Mr Aurescu said he’d discussed the security situation during a recent visit to Washington where he met U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.
He said beefing up security on NATO’s eastern flank to “discourage and defend” would be discussed at a summit next year.
“We’ve been discussing military mobility for some time,” at NATO and the European Union he said.
Concretely, he discussed the Three Seas Initiative, which includes the Rail-2-Sea and Via Carpathia, Rail-2-Sea project.
The railway line will be 3,663 kilometers (2,290 miles) long and run from Poland to Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, all NATO and EU states.
The Three Seas Initiative groups 12 EU members along a north-south axis from the Baltic Sea in northeast Europe to the Adriatic Sea in the southeast and the Black Sea in the east.
“This will aid regional economic development and stimulate the post-pandemic economy.. It will help military mobility as troops and equipment can be quickly transported,” along the eastern flank.
