Poland's foreign minister has said his country has no problems with the revised European missile defense plan put out by the Obama administration, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Oct. 21).
The new plan's emphasis on defending against a potential short- or medium-range missile attack from Iran would augment Poland's national security, said Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. He added that Warsaw is ready to forget about the initial discomfort that surrounded the U.S. decision to scrap a Bush-era missile defense plan that involved deployment of 10 long-range interceptors in Poland.
"That's the past," Sikorski said. "Let's forget about it."
Under the initial phase of the revised plan, U.S. naval vessels outfitted with missile interceptors would patrol the waters of the eastern Mediterranean. Land-based versions of Standard Missile 3 interceptor would later be deployed in European nations, with Poland likely to host some of the weapons.
Sikorski said Warsaw's chief security desire is to have U.S. troops stationed in the country as a hedge against Russian aggression.
"We are a border country of NATO and we all know what it means," he said.
Large-scale military drills carried out by Russia and Belarus in September, which included the simulated use of nuclear arms and the staged storming of a "Polish" beach, are baffling, Sikorski said (see GSN, Nov. 2).
"We don't understand what kind of message Russia was trying to send with the largest military exercises on NATO's borders since the collapse of the Soviet Union," he said.
Sikorski said that U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, in a visit late last month, assured Warsaw that Washington had no intention of harming its relationships with Central Europe as it pursues stronger ties with Russia (Desmond Butler, Associated Press/NewsOK.com, Nov. 4).