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Poland wants to alleviate Russian concerns on missile defence
Nov 19, 2008, 21:54 GMT
Washington - Poland will offer a set of proposals designed to assure Russia that US plans to base a missile-defence system in Eastern Europe will not pose a threat.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said his country will allow Russia to monitor and inspect the facility but not agree to a permanent presence of Russian officials.
'We would like Russia to have the confidence that whatever we declare might happen in those facilities is the case,' Sikorski said Wednesday at the Atlantic Council of the United States, a Washington think tank.
The United States plans to base 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic by 2013 to counter Iran's growing ballistic missile threat.
Moscow views the deployment as an act of aggression that threatens its strategic nuclear deterrent, and the issue has brought US-Russian relations to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said November 5 that Moscow will field missiles in its Kaliningrad enclave in Eastern Europe in response to the US deployment.
Medvedev has expressed hope that when president-elect Barack Obama takes office he will reverse President George W Bush's plans for missile defence. Obama has been more skeptical of the deployment, but has not announced whether he will proceed.
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