Translated material
Comfort Poland
Joseph Biden brings new proposals
US Vice President Joseph Biden plans to visit Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic this week. The closest ally of American President Barack Obama begins his visit to Eastern Europe from Warsaw. Biden's negotiations with the Polish leadership are scheduled for tomorrow.Warsaw was sensitive to the decision of the new US administration, announced in mid-September, to abandon previous plans to deploy ten interceptor missiles of the American missile defense system (ABM) on Polish territory. The Polish media resentfully reproached the United States for “betrayal” and “collusion with Russia,” and for its readiness to exchange allied relations with Eastern Europe for rapprochement with Moscow.
However, it soon became clear that the United States was not abandoning the missile defense system, but was only modernizing it. The Pentagon plans to first install interceptor missiles and a maritime mobile radar system on warships, and then begin deploying them on the ground. The US military is hinting that it first wants to resolve the issue of ground-based Standard missile defense bases “somewhere in southern Europe.” And after this, bases may appear in the northern and eastern regions “near the Baltic.”
An expert at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, Bartosz Wisniewski, told Vremya Novostey that Biden’s visit is intended to “smooth out the unfavorable impression that the new American administration made by refusing to deploy a missile defense system in Poland,” because by doing so, Washington “virtually threw into the trash” the agreement signed in August 2008 Polish-American Treaty in Warsaw. “The US Vice President is coming not only to reassure Poland. The Polish government will be presented with new proposals for military cooperation, the expert believes. “The very fact of the visit of Obama’s representative indicates that the United States wants to reassure Poland that it continues to view it as an important strategic partner.”
Biden's visit to Warsaw was prepared by US Deputy Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow, who took part in the first meeting of the Polish-American high-level group on strategic issues, which ended on Friday. Mr. Vershbow attributed Obama's decision on missile defense to changes in threat assessments and technological reasons.
At the talks in Warsaw, the issue was also raised about the American Patriot air defense system, the first battery of which could be deployed in Poland in the first half of 2010. The further schedule for the transfer of Patriots will depend on how quickly Poland decides to purchase the complexes. In addition, Mr. Vershbow recalled, the Poles still have not approved the status of the presence of American troops in Poland.
The Polish Foreign Ministry confirmed that the Americans submitted written proposals to Warsaw for participation in the new missile defense program. Information leaked to the press that there was renewed interest in the town of Redzikowo near Slupsk in northern Poland - it was there that they planned to build an American base and construct silos for ten anti-missile missiles. The new mobile American missile defense project does not require the construction of mines, but does not exclude the construction of bases in the Eastern European region. Perhaps the attention to Redzikowo is due to the Americans’ desire to use the place where preparatory work was already underway.
“The American proposals look vague, but everything will be decided by the Polish government, and this can be put to good use,” Bartosz Wisniewski noted to VN. - True, the question arises: what to do with the agreement signed a year ago? The United States believes that it will be enough to agree on the application.” The expert believes that Polish-American negotiations “will help the United States develop a strategy for further relations with Moscow”, taking into account the discussion of the prospects for American-Russian cooperation in the field of missile defense.