Last American nuclear bombs leave Britain after half a century of protest



America has withdrawn the last of its nuclear weapons from military bases in Britain, it was claimed yesterday.

The remaining 110 freefall nuclear bombs are understood to have been removed from RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk on President George Bush's orders.

News of the apparent withdrawal emerged in a report by the Federation of American Scientists, a group set up in the Cold War by U.S. physicists.

Controversy: The removal of U.S. bombs from RAF Lakenheath brings protests like this to an end

But author Hans Kristensen, a leading expert on the U.S. nuclear arsenal, said it was unclear exactly when the last bombs were removed from Lakenheath.

All movements of such weapons are shrouded in secrecy and the Pentagon has long adopted a policy of refusing to 'confirm or deny' the presence of nuclear warheads at any of its bases around the world.

But a U.S. Air Force document dated January last year, setting out details of safety inspections at American military nuclear sits, lets slip that a series of emergency drills are 'not applicable to Lakenheath.'

The last remaining weapons at Lakenheath are reported to have been relatively primitive B-61 freefall bombs, designed in the 1960s to be dropped from long-range bombers onto targets into the Soviet Union.

Mr Kristensen said the presence of such bombs in Britain was 'not very relevant any more', with America focusing its nuclear presence in southern Europe - particularly at Aviano in Italy and Incirlik in Turkey.

American warheads were withdrawn from Greece in 2001, he said, and the trend undermined the case for continuing to keep an estimated 250 U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe - which analysts believe now fulfil more of a political than a military role, in maintaining America's close ties with its European Nato allies.

America's silence over the withdrawal was 'puzzling', Mr Kristensen added, as the news could help reassure Russia and achieve matching cuts in its own nuclear stockpile.

America first based its nuclear weapons in Britain in 1954, and at one stage had hundreds of warheads stored at UK bases.

The arrival of 160 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles at Greenham Common and Molesworth in the early 1980s sparked huge protests, which continued at each site for years - even long after the weapons were withdrawn from Britain under the terms of an arms reduction treaty with the USSR.

Britain's own remaining nuclear deterrent has for the last 10 years been limited to the Trident missiles carried by four Vanguard class Royal Navy submarines based at Faslane, near Glasgow.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament welcomed the report yesterday, but warned against replacing American warheads with interceptor missiles as part of America's fiercely controversial missile defence network.

Chairwoman Kate Hudson said: 'We would like official confirmation from the government that this has happened and believe an open admission will be a confidence-boosting measure for future disarmament initiatives.

'However, withdrawal of the tactical nuclear weapons from Lakenheath should not now give way to the installation of interceptor missiles for the US Missile Defence system - a proposal Tony Blair put to the U.S. last February.

'To withdraw the Cold War weapons but still pursue U.S. Missile Defence would replace one historical arms race with another, with Europe again at the centre.'