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World News
Missile talks with Poles gain urgency
By Jan Cienski in Warsaw
Aug 14, 2008, 10:56
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(Financial Times) - Talks on building part of a US missile defence shield on Polish soil restarted on Wednesday, with Polish officials sending much more positive signals than recently, in part because of fears awakened by the Russian attack on Georgia.
Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, said this week: “The Georgian issue shows that in the generally understood area of the former Soviet bloc, real security guarantees are important.”
The US would like to build a base containing 10 missile interceptors in Poland, which would be linked with a radar located in neighbouring Czech Republic. The Czechs have already agreed to host the radar, but Mr Tusk’s government has been much more wary.
Warsaw has been concerned that a missile base would become a target of Russian hostility, a not unreasonable assumption in light of the threats Moscow has issued over the programme. In order to ensure that Polish security does not suffer, negotiators have been pressing the US to station Patriot interceptor batteries in Poland to protect Polish airspace.
“One Patriot missile battery permanently stationed in Poland, that is our government’s minimum condition,” Bogdan Klich, the defence minister, said on Wednesday on Polish radio.
Mr Tusk said that the crisis in Georgia showed the need for Poland to ensure its own security, so that it would not be left “naked” with only the missile defence base, which is intended to protect the US in the event of a rocket attack by a rogue state.
The fighting between Russia and Georgia appears to have made the benefits of having a permanent US troop presence on Polish soil more apparent to Warsaw. US negotiators are also interested in strengthening security ties with Poland.
If a deal is struck soon, George W. Bush would chalk up a foreign policy success before his presidency comes to an end in January.
Stanislaw Komorowski, Poland’s deputy defence minister, told the Dziennik newspaper that an agreement was possible this week.
“The signals coming from Washington show that the Americans have come out in favour of Poland’s demands,” he said.
Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, said the international situation made security guarantees more important than before, adding that Patriot missiles would be a “tangible” improvement in safety.
The US state department would not comment in detail on missile defence or on Poland’s chances of obtaining Patriots.
The missile defence shield is unpopular with voters in both the Czech Republic and in Poland, but the centre-right governments of both countries feel that having the bases, with their US troops, would improve their security. Neither country’s officials see an attack by a rogue state – the raison d’être of the missile shield – as a realistic threat, but they regard the presence of the bases as a bulwark against a possible threat from Russia.
Lech Kaczynski, Poland’s president, has been more enthusiastic about the base than Mr Tusk, being more suspicious of Moscow than the prime minister. This week he led a delegation of central European leaders to Tbilisi. He said he was there to “do battle” and that Russia “wants to dominate neighbouring countries”.
(link to source)
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