The announcement comes after the US Defence Department submitted a report to Congress ruling out the possibility of the US base at Lajes becoming the site of an information centre that had previously been slated for the UK, or any other alternative use.
In a statement sent to Lusa, Portugal’s government reaffirmed “the great potential of the existing infrastructure on Terceira island.” This, it argues, is “bolstered by its strategic location, not only for the domain of defence but for a broader range of functions and uses.”
Even as the first phase of the US scaling down of its presence in the Azores proceeds, the government in Lisbon says that it “remains determined to showing and identifying all the useful elements that can enable an adequate appreciation of the conditions of the Base, of the island and of the Azores archipelago as a whole.”