WARSAW (AP) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Poland on Friday for talks with Polish leaders expected to include a U.S. request to set up a controversial missile defense base in Poland.
Merkel said earlier this week that missile defense would be on the agenda in her meetings with Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski and his twin brother Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski during her two-day visit.
In an interview with Germany’s ZDF television broadcast, Merkel said Germany prefers “a solution within NATO and also an open discussion with Russia” about missile defense and said she would discuss her position during the trip to Warsaw.
That message was echoed Friday by Ruprecht Polenz, the head of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a member of Merkel’s Christian Democrats. On SWR radio, Polenz called on Poland to avoid a go-it-alone attitude on missile defense, saying it was important not to create zones with different security levels within NATO.
The U.S. plan envisions 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar base in neighboring Czech Republic to protect Europe from missile attacks from so-called “rogue nations,” such as Iran. But it has raised the ire of Moscow, where leaders have said it could upset the balance of power.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski has said he generally supports hosting a base as long as it does not harm Polish security. Talks are expected to open between Warsaw and Washington in the near future, though no date has been set.
Merkel is to deliver a speech Friday afternoon at Warsaw University. In the evening, she is to travel to the Hel peninsula on the Baltic Sea coast for a private meeting with the president at his presidential resort, meant to strengthen their relationship.
Highlighting the personal tone of this visit, Merkel will be joined by her husband, Joachim Sauer, who makes only the rarest of public appearances.
German-Polish relations have been frayed by controversy over efforts by a German group to memorialize the suffering of Germans expelled from Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe at the end of World War II.
Many Poles fear such efforts, including a proposed museum in Berlin, could bring confusion about responsibility for World War II, when their country suffered a brutal Nazi occupation.
Poles have also criticized a joint German-Russian pipeline under the Baltic Sea that would enable Russian gas deliveries to bypass Poland.
