Warsaw Pleased to Welcome US Halting Troop Pullout From Germany

WARSAW (Sputnik) - Poland welcomes the United States’ decision to freeze the planned troop withdrawal from Germany and wants "the widest possible" American military presence in Europe, National Security Bureau (BBN) chief Pawel Soloch said on Friday.

"We are pleased to welcome the US president's decision to suspend the US troop withdrawal from Germany", Soloch said in a statement.

He recalled that President Andrzej Duda at the time had "called for maintaining the US presence in Europe". According to the BBN chief, Warsaw did "not link this issue with an increased presence of US troops in Poland".

In this photo taken March 10, 2019, in Wesola,near Warsaw, central Poland, are seen Polish troops in combat gear during brief exercise with some other NATO forces marking 20 years since Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary joined the Western military alliance

© AP Photo / Czarek Sokolowski

Poland, he explained, strives for "the widest possible presence of US forces throughout Europe, which would allow us to respond to possible threats and, if necessary, strengthen the eastern flank of the alliance".

In his first foreign policy speech on Thursday, President Joe Biden announced that the US is halting any planned removal of forces from Germany pending "a global posture review". Last year, the Donald Trump administration unveiled plans to reduce US troops in Germany by some 12,000. Polish authorities then pushed for part of the troops to be relocated to its soil.