Polish Radio August 17, 2014
Wales summit to decide on NATO bases in Poland?
Following months of lobbying by Poland to beef up the alliance’s eastern flank, hopes have turned to the upcoming summit in Wales for a concrete decision on the creation of a NATO support base in Poland.
“We hope that a decision will be taken on the creation of a logistics centre for equipment and other provisions for Alliance members stationed in Poland as well as the Baltic States,” head of the National Security Bureau, General Stanislaw Koziej told Polish Radio.
According to Koziej, due to the increased financing such a construction would need, the base will most likely take some years to be built.
The comment comes as Washington announced last Wednesday that “600 soldiers from the Fort Hood, Texas-based 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, will rotate to Poland as the next unit to participate in the reassurance initiative”.
“This is the effect of an agreement which we rubberstamped with the Americans in spring,” Poland’s Defence Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said.
Some 200 Canadians and 1,200 British soldiers are also expected to be stationed in Poland at the same time for training exercises in the region, while a delegation from the US Army is expected to arrive in Warsaw next week to discuss the planned operations.
Warsaw has been pushing for a greater NATO presence in the region, with renewed calls for a NATO beef up after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and further pro-Russian rebel-led actions caused unrest in eastern Ukraine. Speaking during a ceremony on Army Day on 15 August, which commemorates a Polish victory over the Soviets in 1920 at the Battle of Warsaw, President Bronislaw Komorowski said that “freedom is not given once and for all, it has to be protected, strengthened, prized”. “We are responsible for the independence of the Polish state, for its armed forces, and are co-responsible for the strength of the NATO alliance,” he underlined.
Speaking on the upcoming summit in Newport, Wales, Komorowski said that Poland will address finance issues. “It cannot be so that our powerful neighbour to the east has been increasing its defence budget for the past eight years while NATO has been cutting costs,” the President said, adding that “In Poland, we too should start spending the recommended 2 percent of GDP on defence.”
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