Time Limited for Missile Defense Talks, Poland Says

Poland hopes to ink a missile defense deal with the United States on hosting 10 missile interceptors before the next U.S. president is elected in November, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, March 11).

“The [Bush administration’s] term expires in a few months … so it seems that if we wanted to sign an agreement, we have time until the summer,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, who has led Warsaw’s negotiations on installation of 10 missile interceptors in Poland.

If there is no deal by summer, “there may be a need to reopen the negotiations next year,” he said.  Waszczykowski said be believed the agreement would remain viable under the next president (see related GSN story, today).

Poland has demanded access to U.S. air-defense systems and support for military upgrades in exchange for accepting the interceptors.  Washington also hopes soon to seal an agreement to install a radar base in the Czech Republic (see GSN, March 25; Associated Press/PR-inside, March 25).

Meanwhile, U.S. officials are gearing up for midlevel talks tomorrow aimed at helping overcome Russian objections to deployment of missile defense elements in Europe, Agence France-Presse reported.

The session follows proposals made last week in Moscow by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.  One offer was to allow Russian officials to inspect the planned Czech and Polish sites.

The U.S. officials also pledged that the system “will be not directed” at Russia, which has characterized any European missile defense elements as a potential threat to its strategic security, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last week.

“I’m sure that transparency is going to be one of the big issues that they focus on,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.  “Anything that is mutually agreeable with us and the Russians of course has to be agreeable to the host governments” (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, March 25).

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