Poland: Government planning US missile defence system?
01 November 2005
In a government declaration of November, the new Polish Prime Minister, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, announced plans to allow the US to install a European base to intercept long-range missiles. According to the daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita, the base would be located in the Tatra Mountains in southern Poland. The BBC has reported that an unnamed Pentagon official confirmed that talks between US and Polish officials had been going on since 2002. "We have the most mature dialogue with Poland because they've expressed continuing interest in the subject," he said. "There are other countries that remain interested in the dialogue on the possible emplacement of interceptors in Europe," namely Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Marcinkiewicz confirmed that Poland has been in talks for the past three years about the possibility of hosting such a base but said that no decisions had been made yet. "This is an important issue for Poland, related to our security and to our cooperation with an important ally," Marcinkiewicz said. US tests of the multi-billion system in the Pacific in December 2004 and February 2005 both failed, provoking a crisis of confidence that threatened long-term funding for the project. It was also reported that the Industrial Telecommunications Institute in Warsaw, which makes radar systems, confirmed that it had signed an agreement for cooperation on the project with Boeing in May 2003.
So far missiles for the US "defence" system have not been stationed outside of US territory, two bases are currently located in Alaska and California. In an interview with the press agency PAP, retired General Boleslav Balcerovicz commented that it was unclear if such a base was really intended to protect Europe or Poland or to serve US foreign policy interests. The conservative US think tank The Claremont Institute, which has devoted its mission to "recovering a limited and accountable government that respects private property, promotes stable family life and maintains a strong defence" says on its site MissileThreat.com that:
Russia continues to express concern that such Europe-based sites could negate the threat of its offensive nuclear arsenal against the USA, but the US continues to emphasize that ground-based midcourse defences such as those which could possibly be sited in Poland would be very likely useless against any Russian missile attack over the pole.
Süddeutsche Zeitung 18.11.05; http://www.missilethreat.com; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4445284.stm