General
George W. Casey, the Commanding General of the Multinational Force Iraq,
has sent a letter to Ambassador András Simonyi on the occasion of the
10th anniversary of establishing the Taszár airfield in Hungary as
NATO's first military base in Central Europe. General Casey was
the first Commanding General of the Taszár airfield.
The
base was used by more than 100,000 U.S. troops during the last decade
and served as a staging area and training center of the U.S. military
and NATO during the stabilization efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo. It
also served as a training facility for the Free Iraqi Forces (FIF) -
Iraqi opposition volunteers - prior to and during the military
operations against Saddam Hussein's Iraq by Coalition forces, of which
Hungary was a part.
Taszár
has not only been an important military facility during the past decade,
but also a symbol of the changes that occurred in Europe after 1989, of
Hungary's democratic transformation, and of the strong relationship
between Hungary and the United States.
Click
here to read letter (JPG).
