Poland Wants Clear Answer On US Missiles - Government
"We're still lacking an essential, clear response as to whether the U.S. will go ahead with the shield plan. It's a fundamental question to which we need a definite answer," government spokesman Pawel Gras said on the Polish rolling news station TVN24.
"On our side we've met the pledges in this deal. The land [for the base] is ready and waiting," he said.
After more than a year of painstaking negotiations, Warsaw and Washington struck a deal in 2008 on deploying 10 long-range interceptor missiles in Poland.
According to the previous U.S. administration of George W. Bush the system - meant to be in operation by 2013, and also including a powerful targeting radar in the Czech Republic - was aimed to help foil threats from what it dubbed "rogue states," citing Iran. But Moscow was enraged by the plans in its Soviet-era sphere of influence, and threatened to train nuclear warheads on Poland and the Czech Republic, which broke free from the communist bloc in 1989 and joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization 10 years later.
In 2008, Warsaw and Washington signed a related accord on boosting Poland's air defenses by deploying Patriot missiles.
Gras underlined Warsaw was still waiting for the "U.S. to make good on the promise by the new administration, independently of the shield plan, to deploy a battery of Patriot missiles."
In April, U.S. President Barack Obama said he would move forward with the missile defense plan developed by the previous administration as long as a missile threat from Iran persisted. But he said the system must be cost-effective and proven to work. Last month Washington insisted it would push ahead with the Patriot deployment regardless of what happened to the anti-missile plan.
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Publié le 12 Juin 2009 Copyright © 2009 Dowjones
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