Poland needs its own missile defense shield while the agreement with the United States on the deployment of an anti-ballistic-missile defense system on its territory was “a mistake,” Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski said in an interview with the Wprost magazine, published on Saturday.
“We must have this element of the Polish defense [missile defense system]. Spending large sums on military hardware is actually meaningless if it is not secured from… the missile attack and air raids,” Komorowski said, adding that Polish shield must be a part of the existing European missile defense system.
The president also said that the agreement to deploy the U.S. anti-ballistic-missile defense system on the Polish territory which was later scrapped by the U.S. President Barack Obama, has been “a political mistake” that should not be repeated in future.
“Our mistake was that while accepting the U.S. proposal, we have not taken into account a political risk related to the change of the U.S. president. We have paid a too high political price for that,” Komorowski told the magazine.
The United States scrapped plans in September of 2010 for an anti-ballistic-missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland. Moscow welcomed the move, and Russia’s then-President Dmitry Medvedev said later that Russia would drop plans to deploy Iskander-M tactical missiles in its Kaliningrad Region, which borders NATO members, Poland and Lithuania.
Last year, however, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Washington's plans to deploy the U.S. new-generation ballistic missile defense interceptor site in Poland by 2018.
