The United States plans to redeploy its troops across the globe to make them more responsive to new threats, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told his Russian counterpart, Sergei Ivanov, over the weekend, media reports said Sunday.

On his way back to Washington from St. Petersburg, Russia, Rumsfeld said on Sunday that the United States plans to pull out some of its troops out of Germany and northern Europe as part of a major redeployment of US forces abroad.

In St. Petersburg, Rumsfeld and Ivanov discussed a wide range of security issues over a two-day period, which included the US plans to realign its forces, Chechnya, NATO expansion, Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, weapons proliferation and missile defense.

"There will be a shift from Germany, and we've talked to Germany about that, and some numbers," Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld did not disclose the number of American troops that would be reduced in Europe, but US officials said Saturday that President George W. Bush was expected to announced the plans in a speech on Monday to bring home 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia in a major realignment of American presence across the globe.

Rumsfeld said the United States will continue to have bases in Germany, but has no plans for similar arrangements in the former Soviet republics.

The US troop shift "would go not towards the Baltics, it would go south to the United States and elsewhere," he said.

Currently there are more than 100,000 American troops in Europe,including about 70,000 in Germany, and another 100,000 in the Asia-Pacific region, in addition to some 150,000 troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During his week-long trip, Rumsfeld also visited Ukraine and Azerbaijan - two former Soviet republics, and Afghanistan.

Source: Xinhua