An official date has been set for American nuclear submarines to leave Sardinia after some 35 years on the Italian island.
The closure of the Sardinian base, announced last year, will take place on February 29, 2008, civilian staff were told Thursday evening.
The term for winding up the base - on the small island of La Maddalena, just off Sardinia's northernmost tip - was confirmed Friday by the local US Naval Support Office.
Sardinian officials have hailed the departure of the subs but at the same time voiced concern about the impact on the local economy. Tentative plans have been aired to turn the base into a shipyard for the upkeep of ferries and mega-yachts.
But nothing concrete has emerged yet.
However, the well-appointed living quarters on the base could easily be turned into tourist apartments, officials say.
La Maddalena has a budding tourist industry which could exploit its "great potential" if the right facilities were built, a regional spokesman said.
US Ambassador Ronald Spogli visited La Maddalena when the closure became official last summer, saying: "We've been on La Maddalena for more than 30 years and it's been a very positive experience".
The base was set up by a secret accord in the depths of the Cold War in 1972.
"The international situation has changed," Spogli said, and now it's time we made the move".
Sardinia's regional government chief, former dotcom magnate Renato Soru, campaigned to close the base but has also discussed with Spogli the possible use of US technology and funding to set up new Sardinian businesses.
Soru is one of many officials who have campaigned for the subs to go because of environmental fears.
When their departure was announced, Soru called it "fantastic news".
Soru scored a landslide re-election win in 2005 on the slogan, "We are friends of the Americans but in the future we'd like to see them here only as tourists".
The mayor of the nearest town to the base said "we've been living with this danger for 33 years".
"We have shared many things with the Americans, we've been linked by a great friendship that we want to keep up, but now our region has to go ahead on its own two feet, in complete autonomy".
The island's two separatist groups, Indipende'ntzia Repu'brica de Sardigna (Irs) and Sardigna Natzione Indipendentzia, who have staged sit-ins and other protests at the base, hailed the news as "a victory for all the Sardinian people".
La Maddalena is part of a wildlife and sea reserve along with the nearby island of Caprera - the retirement hideaway of famed Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Irs, along with local officials, stepped up its campaign against the base in January 2004 when a French research institute found that the waters near the base were four times more radioactive than would usually be expected.
Opposition also swelled after an accident in October 2003 in which a sub raked the bottom of the sea near the base - an incident for which the boat's commander was dismissed.
