Poland Moves Closer to Missile Defense Cooperation

A visit from President George Bush last week has moved Poland closer to accepting 10 U.S. missile interceptors on its soil, Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said today (see GSN, June 11).

“There was talk of an honest agreement and I hope that it will be reached,” he said, following Bush’s meeting with President Lech Kaczynski, the prime minister’s twin brother.  A requirement of any deal would be that it strengthen Polish security, he said.

The prime minister also accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “playing a game” by suggesting that the United States use a Soviet-era radar base in Azerbaijan for tracking potential missile flights, rather than installing a new radar in the Czech Republic, the Associated Press reported.

“Not so long ago President Putin claimed that the installation itself was something incredibly dangerous and threatened nuclear bombs,” Kaczynski said.  “But the fact that he’s playing some sort of game is nothing new.”

Moscow can not be allowed to win the fight over European missile defenses, the prime minister said.

“If the Kremlin succeeds in winning, its position toward Europe would be incomparably stronger than at this moment,” he said (Ryan Lucas, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 12).

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