6 November 2009 / REUTERS, WASHINGTON
Central Europe needs “strategic reassurance” from Washington and NATO forces should be placed in the region to underscore its value to the alliance, Poland’s foreign minister has said.
The minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, said a visit last month to Poland and the Czech Republic by US Vice President Joe Biden, to ease concerns about Washington’s revised missile defense plans, had been welcome, but military capabilities would be more convincing than words. “If you can still afford it, we need some strategic reassurance,” Sikorski said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. President Barack Obama recently decided to scrap plans for Poland and the Czech Republic to host elements of an ambitious missile shield against possible long-range attack from Iran.
