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Poland denies Russian report of FM comments on US troops
Warsaw (AFP) Nov 6, 2009 Poland on Friday denied a Russian press report claiming that the Polish foreign minister recently suggested he would welcome US troops in Poland to deter a Russian tank invasion. Russia's Interfax news agency quoted Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski as saying Wednesday at a Washington-based research centre: "We want to have American troops deployed in our country as a shield against Russian agression on our country." The Interfax report "in a completely unjustified fashion attributed words to the minister that he never uttered," Polish foreign ministry press spokesman Piotr Paszkowski said in a statement Friday. "It seems that in this case we are dealing with intentional manipulation," Paszkowski said. "Because the (Interfax) report elicited, which is perhaps what was intended, numerous and wide-spread reactions, the Foreign Affairs Ministry press spokesman will ask Interfax for a speedy and unequivocal correction of the errors in the original report," he added. The Interfax report on comments allegedly made by Sikorski during a visit to Washington this week has received extensive coverage in the Russian media. "If it is confirmed that Mr Sikorski really said this, the only thing we can do is express our extreme bewilderment," Russian foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told reporters Friday. "It would turn out that Cold War reflexes of the worst kind are still alive in Warsaw," Nesterenko added. According to an audio recording on the website of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Sikorski noted that Russia and its ally Belarus had recently conducted a major exercise involving hundreds of military vehicles close to Poland and commented that "these tanks... were just 250 kilometres (150 miles) of flat ground from our capital city." "What really reassured Germany, for example, during the Cold War was not Article 5... but the presence of 300,000 American troops," Sikorski said at the Washington-based centre, referring to the mutual defence clause of the NATO Charter. "We have, at the latest count, six American troops. One, two, three, four, five, six outside the embassy," he added, apparently referring to the US embassy in Warsaw. Russia has been highly suspicious of any US military deployments in its former Soviet-era sphere of influence, including in Poland, a member of the NATO military alliance. Share This Article With Planet Earth
Related Links Learn about the Superpowers of the 21st Century at SpaceWar.com Learn about nuclear weapons doctrine and defense at SpaceWar.com
Merkel wants close U.S.-EU tiesBerlin (UPI) Nov 3, 2009 German Chancellor Angela Merkel Tuesday told the U.S. Congress that Europe and the United States should move closer together to better tackle global threats including climate change, Iran and the war in Afghanistan. In the first speech of a German chancellor to Congress in more than five decades, Merkel said the NATO-led campaign in Afghanistan "must be taken to the next level" as soon ... read more |
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