Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 2, 1993 TAG: 9307020090
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The decision, made after consultations Wednesday between the president and his national security advisers and scheduled to be announced this morning, is expected to ensure that the commission's recommendations will take effect unchanged sometime this autumn.
Under the law, the president either must accept the commission's proposals intact or return them for changes by July 15. If he approves the panel's plan, Congress then will have 45 legislative days to vote to block the proposals. Otherwise, they automatically become law.
The Defense Department recommended in March closing 31 major bases, including eight in California, but over the following two months the base-closings panel - known formally as the Defense Base-Closure and Realignment Commission - removed some from the list and added others.
As White House officials signaled the president's intentions, the Pentagon announced Thursday that it was shutting down or reducing operations at 92 U.S. military sites overseas in the largest such pullback in three years.
The action brings the total number of overseas bases that have been closed since early 1990 to 840, a cut of almost 50 percent from previous levels and a far faster rate than the shutdown of domestic installations.
The closures would all but eliminate the U.S. military presence in Berlin and cut the number of U.S. troops in Frankfurt and Fulda - two other major Cold War-era installations. There now are fewer than 200,000 U.S. troops in Europe, down from 316,000 four years ago.
The base-closings panel made its decisions last weekend after weeks of public hearings in Washington and at cities across the country at which it listened to often-emotional appeals from politicians and civic groups that it keep their bases intact.
by CNB