Italy should not become a United States "nuclear arms depot", a Senator from the ruling grassroots 5-Star Movement said Monday after media reports cited a former US general as recommending that some 50 B61 nuclear bombs be relocated from Turkey.
"Italy already hosts countless American bases and around 50 US nuclear warheads could be a constant threat to the population and be targeted by terrorists or military foes," said Gianluca Ferrara, 5-Star's chief whip in the Senate upper house of parliament.
"It would turn Italy into Europe's biggest nuclear arms depot," Ferrara warned.
Ferrara urged a parliamentary debate and consultation with local populations should Italy's government get an official request to take the US nuclear bombs from their reported current location at Turkey’s Incirlik airbase.
Ferrara issued the statement after Italy's Gazzettino and Il Fatto at the weekend cited a recen interview given by retired 4-star Air Force general Chuck Wald to Bloomberg news agency in which he questioned Turkey's trustworthiness as a US ally.
“I think that the most pressing concern for the US now is that we have nuclear capabilities at Incirlik that no longer serve the same strategic purpose that they did in the past,” Wald was quoted as saying in the interview.
Given the growing strain of anti-Americanism in Turkey and (its president Recep Tayyip) Erdogan’s willingness to move closer toward Russia, we urgently need to relocate those weapons,” Wald added.
