WARSAW (AP) – A Polish lawmaker warned Washington on Wednesday not to take Poland for granted as it seeks to place a missile defense base here, arguing that lost trust over the Iraq war and Russian hostility to U.S. bases in the region could make it a tough sell.
U.S. President George W. Bush’s government wants to place a radar base in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland as part of a system capable of shooting down missiles from countries such as Iran. The request has infuriated Russia and raised anxieties continent wide about a new arms race.
“If the Bush administration expects Poles and Czechs to jump for joy and agree to whatever is proposed, it’s going to face a mighty crash with reality,” Radek Sikorski, a senator and former defense minister, wrote in an op-ed published in Wednesday’s Washington Post.
Sikorski said the U.S. proposal “may generate a new security partnership with the countries of the region. Or it could provoke a spiral of misunderstanding, weaken NATO, deepen Russian paranoia and cost the United States some of its last friends on the continent.”
Sikorski’s editorial appeared as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried visited Warsaw for talks on the plan. Poland’s Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski has signaled openness to the proposal as long as it boosts the country’s security.
Formal negotiations are expected to open soon with Warsaw and Prague, though no date has been set.
Some Polish leaders have suggested they would expect the U.S. to provide additional security in exchange, like placing Patriot missiles in Poland as well. That message was echoed by Sikorski in his piece, titled “Don’t Take Poland for Granted.”
“Our American colleagues say not to worry, that NATO will protect us, but rhetorical assurances are too easy,” Sikorski wrote. “Just as the Holocaust is the formative experience even for Jews who are too young to remember it, so Poland is haunted by the memory of fighting Hitler alone in 1939 while our allies stood by. Never again will we allow ourselves to be egged on by paper guarantees not backed by practical means of delivery.”
“Therefore, if relations with Russia are to deteriorate because of the proposed missile base, the United States must demonstrate that it will do for Poland what it is doing for Japan in the face of its confrontation with North Korea: tightening formal security arrangements and deploying batteries of Patriot missiles or the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system.”
Sikorski was defense minister from October 2005 to February of this year. The prime minister has said he considers Sikorski to be a good candidate to become the next ambassador to Washington.
