Bermuda's strategic obsolescence.

US forces flying to the Gulf to bolster Kuwait's defences against a new threat from Iraq are bypassing Bermuda in favour of the Azores.

While work proceeds in Bermuda for the shutdown of the US Navy bases, Lajes air base on the island of Terceira has been jammed with activity, Reuter reported last week.

US forces are relying heavily on Lajes to act as an "air bridge'' for the thousands of troops being flown to the Middle East.

A US official in Lisbon said the Air Force had stationed a fleet of tanker aircraft at Lajes to refuel military planes in the air.

Other aircraft were actually landing at Lajes, a Portuguese air base where the United States has stationed air force units since the Second World War. "It is what the military likes to call a surge. It's big,'' the official said.

The Portuguese news agency Lusa reported that 12 in-flight refuelling planes had been stationed at Lajes since Wednesday and dozens of military transport planes and combat aircraft had landed there last week during the Gulf build-up.

Like Bermuda, Lajes, with its long runway and huge underground fuel storage tanks, was once a key base for anti-submarine patrols in the North Atlantic and a stepping stone for reinforcing NATO forces in western Europe.

Unlike Bermuda, Lajes has remained strategically important as a refuelling point for US rapid intervention forces crossing the Atlantic since the end of the Cold War.

The air base was a vital refuelling post before and during the 1991 Gulf War, when US-led forces drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.

Lajes, which is 800 miles west of the Portuguese mainland and 2,100 miles east of New York, was also used during the US intervention in Somalia as part of the United Nations' failed peacekeeping effort there last year.

US Base commander in Bermuda, Capt. Tim Bryan, yesterday said Lajes' continued importance was "just a matter of geography''.

"It's nice to have a place like that to set up and refuel for planes heading to Europe and beyond and for countries to the south.''