Two Polish officers will be reprimanded for making false allegations that the country's troops found recently manufactured Franco-German missiles in Iraq which led to a diplomatic spat with France, the defence ministry said on Thursday."A high-ranking officer in Iraq and another officer in Poland will be reprimanded in the missiles affair," Defence Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski said following the report by the intelligence services into the affair.
On October 4 defence ministry spokesman Eugeniusz Mleczak, who resigned over the matter on October 7, sparked controversy when he said that Iraqi police had notified Polish troops of the discovery of recently manufactured Franco-German missiles in Iraq.
The announcement sparked a denial from French President Jacques Chirac, talks with Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller at the EU's Rome summit and an apology from Szmajdzinski.
Poland's top military commander, Chief of Staff General Czeslaw Piatas, then said Polish forces had made an "error of interpretation" when they said they had found French missiles in Iraq manufactured this year.
The missiles, reportedly Roland surface-to-air missiles, had the markings that read 07-01-KND 2003, which the troops mistook for the year of production.
France was strongly opposed to the US-led war in Iraq, while Poland supported the American and British campaign to oust president Saddam Hussein.
Last month Poland took over the command of some 9,000 troops as part of a stabilisation force patrolling a large portion of central and southern Iraq.
On Thursday the head of military intelligence General Marek Dukaczewski said that the missiles had been made in 1984.
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