Romanian election favourite pledges to stop potential US troop withdrawal

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romanian hard-right opposition leader George Simion, the favourite to win a presidential election re-run, said he is the only candidate who could stop a potential withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.

Romania, a European Union and NATO member, will repeat the two-round election on May 4 and 18 after the Constitutional Court made the initial ballot in December void following accusations of Russian meddling, which Moscow denied.

There are wider concerns in Romania over a potential cut in U.S. troop numbers in Europe and the future of NATO as U.S. media has reported that Washington is drawing up plans to cut troops in eastern Europe.

Simion, leader of the opposition Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR), Romania's second-largest party, is an admirer of Trump and his MAGA movement.

"No longer having American troops in Romania seems dangerous to me and I am the only candidate who can stop that," Simion said during a marathon news conference late on Friday which lasted more than five hours.

"We are the natural allies, we are ideologically aligned with the Republican Party, the MAGA movement."

Cancelling the December election placed Romania at the centre of a dispute between Europe and the Trump administration over free speech and suppressing political opponents.

Simion, who backed the cancelled election's far-right pro-Russian frontrunner and is now his replacement, has called the cancellation a coup and said it made the U.S. more likely to cut its military presence in the country.

"I don't know what those who made a coup on democracy on Dec. 6 would have expected from the United States, not to react, not to withdraw troops, recognise the election cancellation and applaud it?"

Simion's party has developed from a fringe anti-vaccination group during the COVID pandemic into the leading opposition force, appealing to the working-class diaspora and young voters and building on popular anger with mainstream politicians.

The 38-year-old has supported restoring Romania's pre-World War Two borders, which include areas now in Bulgaria, Moldova and Ukraine, leading him to be declared persona non grata in the latter two countries.

On Friday he said a ban on him entering the two states were "abusive restrictions which were enforced by individuals with Soviet reflexes" and said it would end with his election.

A critic of the current European Union leadership, Simion has also said he would stop military aid to Ukraine, which borders Romania. He has opposed gay marriage and introducing Holocaust lessons as a separate class in the curriculum.

On Friday, he said he backed increasing defence spending provided it boosted Romanian industry.

(This story has been corrected to clarify the reference to the Holocaust-related education to show opposition is to specific classes in paragraph 13)

(Reporting by Luiza Ilie; Editing by Susan Fenton)