Non-Subscriber Extract
Poland and US dispute priorities during missile talks
By Brooks Tigner
28 February 2008
Poland and the United States are struggling to accommodate each other's priorities around Washington's plan to erect a missile defence site with interceptors on Polish territory, according to US and Polish government sources.
The US plan, first announced in early 2007, calls for a third facility in Eastern Europe to supplement two existing missile sites in Alaska and California intended to protect the continental US from ballistic missile attack.
The third facility is to include a radar tracking station in the Czech Republic and around 10 interceptors in Poland and would become operational around 2013.
While US-Polish talks on the details and timing of the ballistic missile site itself are progressing, according to the sources the negotiating parties are in opposition over two other subjects arising from, but not directly linked, to the missile site. These are bilateral US-Polish defence co-operation and the stationing of US troops in Poland via a specific status-of-forces agreement (SOFA).
"We see SOFA as the main negotiating track [after missile defence]. They consider a new defence co-operation agreement as more important," a US official told Jane's.
Behind the agreements lie concrete matters of money, military investment and defence capabilities, particularly regarding who pays for what. Poland's initial willingness in early 2007 under its previous administration to shoulder the cost of protecting the future missile site has shifted with its new president, Donald Tusk, who assumed office in November.