MISSILE SHIELD DEAL STILL UNDECIDED

Vilnius (Wilno), Lithuania (PMN)—A senior U.S. official said on May 20, 2008,that the United States remains optimistic it will reach a deal with Poland to deploy missile shield facilities in Poland. Negotiations have been dragging on for months after Warsaw set tough conditions for agreeing to base 10 interceptor rockets on its soil, including that the United States spend billions of dollars on modernizing Polish air defenses.

John Rood, the chief U.S. negotiator with Poland, told reporters in Vilnius, "'If we cannot successfully complete the negotiations we will certainly respect their sovereignty and we will look for an alternative location to place the missile defense facility."

Rood said he had also discussed missile defense with Lithuanian officials, but there were no concrete plans to place the shield's elements in the ex-Soviet republic.

The U.S. administration is viewed as eager to finalize negotiations before President George W. Bush's term in office ends later this year. Rood, however, said there was no deadline for concluding talks with Warsaw. Washington wants to install the interceptor rockets in Poland and a tracking radar in the Czech Republic to protect the United States and its allies from attack by what it calls "rogue states," notably Iran, with whom some believe Bush is prepared to go to war. Russia opposes the plan.

The U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee voted to withhold more than 50% of the funds sought by the Bush administration to start building missile-defense sites in Poland and Czech Republic, pending approval by the two countries of the projects.

Warsaw (PMN)--Polish war crimes prosecutors announced on May 22, 2008, that they have dropped a probe against John Demjanjuk, 88, an ethnic Ukrainian living in the United States. Allegations of Nazi war crimes committed by Demjanjuk have continued for years.

Twenty years ago eyewitnesses identified Demjanjuk, a retired US autoworker, as "Ivan the Terrible." one of the infamous torturers at the Treblinka Nazi German concentration camp, located in what is now eastern Poland. Demjanjuk was born Ivan, later adopting the English version of his name, "John," in the United States. Deported by the U.S. to Israel, he was sentenced to death by an Israeli court in April, 1988, but then acquitted by Israel’s supreme court, which used KGB archives to identify a different man, Ivan Marchenko, as "Ivan the Terrible."

Prosecutor Anna Galkiewicz of Poland’s Institute for National Remembrance (IPN) said the investigation was dropped December 19, 2007, due lack of evidence to incriminate Demjanjuk for murder. The IPN is charged with investigating and prosecuting Nazi and communist-era crimes.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center insists Demjanjuk must be brought to justice for his alleged work as a guard in other Nazi death camps including Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka II. During a five-year investigation IPN investigators confirmed that Demjanjuk was a member of a Ukrainian unit collaborating with Nazi Germany’s SS Ukrainische Wachmanschaften [Ukrainian Guards] and was trained at a Nazi SS training camp in Trawniki, located in modern-day Poland close to the eastern city of Lublin.

Warsaw (PMN)—In a move designed to enhance the creation of a significant European defense capability, Poland has decided on May 15, 2008, to become a full member of Eurocorps, the European Union (EU) and NATO-linked military organization. From 2009, Poland is to pledge 3,000 soldiers to the existing 60,000-strong Eurocorps force, hold 15 officer-level posts and forward a deputy director to the Strasbourg-based group.

Current full members of Eurocorps are France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg. There are also eight junior partners, including Poland, who each contribute a handful of technical staff.

Eurocorps is not an EU institution, but was originally an independent Franco-German project in 1992 to help support EU, NATO and UN operations. It saw active service in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. However, the organization has strong political links to the EU. Its badge is a sword superimposed on a map of Europe and the EU’s golden stars. A Eurocorps unit hoisted the EU flag and played the EU anthem outside the EU parliament in Strasbourg on "Europe Day" in early May.

Polish Defense Minister Bogdan Klich told Polish daily Rzeczpospolita on May 15, "We treat NATO as the main security pillar, but we cannot forget Europe is increasing its capabilities and this stands behind our desire to join this process."

The EU has a mixed bag of military cooperation projects under its European security and defense policy chapter, with an EU-flag peacekeeping force currently at work in Chad. But the new Lisbon Treaty could deepen military integration with a new article that envisages "the progressive framing of a common defense policy [that] will lead to a common defense, when the European Council, acting unanimously, so decides."

Warsaw (PMN)—On May 14, 2008, a Polish court, ordered prosecutors investigating the country’s last communist president, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, to question top Cold War figures, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The Warsaw tribunal acted on a request by defense lawyers for Jaruzelski and two co-defendants over their regime’s 1981 declaration of martial law.

Besides Gorbachev, the court said prosecutors must question former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Polish-born Zbigniew Brzezinski and National Security Adviser to then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

Jaruzelski, now 84, was leader of communist Poland and the ruling Polish United Workers Party in the 1980s. Also accused are former party boss Stanislaw Kania and ex-Interior Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak.

Since communism fell in Poland in 1989, Jaruzelski has faced years of court battles. In April, 2007, he was formally charged with "communist crimes" for declaring martial law on December 13, 1981, in a bid to stamp out a 17-month challenge to his regime from Solidarity, the independent trade union led by Lech Walesa.

Jaruzelski faces up to 10 years in jail if he is found guilty of "having led an armed organization of a criminal character." The general was charged by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a body created in 1998 to prosecute crimes dating from both the communist era and Nazi Germany's World War II occupation of Poland.

The IPN said it would appeal against the ruling that it must question the high-profile witnesses before the trial can begin.

Jaruzelski maintains that he chose martial law as the lesser of two evils, claiming that if Solidarity had brought about the collapse of communism in Poland, a bloody Soviet military intervention would have followed.

Warsaw (PMN)—Cobra Beer, the lager brand owned by India-born, London-based Karan Bilimoria, that had outsourced its production to Poland in 2005, announced on May 12, 2008, that it will shift the bulk of its brewing back to Britain. The main reason for returning to Britain is the transportation costs and the strength of the Polish currency, zloty, vis-à-vis the British pound. The Polish currency has appreciated 35% percent in the last three years and the company says it does not make much economic sense to produce beer in Poland.

Cobra management hopes to save up to $14 million in the future if its target of brewing 26 million gallons of beer annually in Britain by 2010 is achieved.

Cobra, which is also sold in India, has become a popular beer not only in Britain, but in Belgium and Poland. The decision to shift production to Britain will affect the Polish economy, as many jobs will be cut in the Brower brewery in Poland, which has been supplying two-thirds of its production to Britain.

With annual sales of $86 million, Cobra is one of the top 10 premium lager producers and it has now a strategy to promote its sales in mainstream bars and clubs throughout Europe.

Warsaw (PMN)—Experts in modern police procedures from Poland, United Kingdom and United States have been contracted to re-train officers and men of the Nigeria Police Force. The training, scheduled to last five years, is designed to boost the capacity of the Nigeria Police to deliver quality services in the areas of counter terrorism, physical combat, disarmament and crowd control, as well as the use of specially trained dogs for detecting drugs, explosives, search and rescue operations.

The Executive Secretary of the Police Training Committee, Frank Ohwofa disclosed the plans while hosting Grzegorz Walinski, Polish Ambassador to Nigeria and President of the International Police Association (Polish Section), who paid a courtesy visit to the headquarters of the Police Training Committee in Abuja.

Apart from the training program being an opportunity to change the trend of sending officers abroad for training, Ohwofa said, it will also give the Nigeria Police Force the opportunity of being adequately trained in her own environment using and improving on the available training facilities.

While American trainers will be engaged in improving the investigative skills of the Nigerian Police, their counterparts from Poland will concentrate on the use of dogs for special detective operations. The Polish trainers have already arrived in the country and commenced assessment of police training facilities at the Police College.

Warsaw (PMN)—Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at a news conference on May 23, 2008, that Poland will only allow the United States to deploy a missile defense base in Poland if it can be shown that this will improve Poland’s national security. He said that if Warsaw is to allow the plans to go ahead, the U.S. must assist in modernizing the country’s armed forces. Tusk added the U.S. is still a strategic partner of Poland, but warned against being hasty in talks on the issue.

"We’re in negotiations to effectively reinforce our security. The Americans have a different evaluation than we do about the effects the missile shield could have on our security," Tusk told reporters.

Under the U.S. plans, ten missile interceptors will be deployed in Poland and a radar site in the neighboring Czech Republic. Moscow is opposed to the plans, saying the shield would threaten Russia’s national security. It has threatened to point its missiles at Poland should it agree to host the U.S. installation.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told the news conference that if the base is deployed in Poland, Warsaw is ready for Russia to inspect it but that should not be confused with the direct presence of Russian servicemen at the U.S. missile defense base.

The Czech government approved the deployment of the missile defense system on its territory on May 21. The basic document, however, still needs to be ratified by the country’s parliament and signed by President Vaclav Klaus.

On May 22, the U.S. House of Representatives reduced funding for the project by 52%, approving a sum of $370.8 million. The Bush administration had originally requested $712 million in funding for the European component of the missile shield in 2009.

Prague, Czech Republic (PMN)—A Czech website reported on May 23, 2008, that the country must give Poland 369 hectares (912 acres) of disputed Czech territory under a treaty signed in 1958. However, Czech Interior Ministry officials did not wish to reveal the locations where the border between Poland and the Czech Republic will change. But, they have confirmed that there are dozens of spots.

"In the first phase, we have earmarked some 140 hectares (346 acres). Now we are negotiating with municipalities at the border," said Vladimír Repka, an Interior Ministry spokesman.

The ministry has been working on land negotiations with Poland since last year. The roots of current disputes date to the end of World War I and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when both Poland and Czechoslovakia claimed certain border areas as their own.

Tesin is one town that’s in dispute. In 1920, following an armed conflict, the town was divided into two parts. In 1938, Poland occupied the Czech half of Tesin, as well. After World War II, the conflict over Tesin and other border towns such as Orava and Spis flared up again. However, after an intervention by Joseph Stalin, Poland agreed only to minor changes of the border. In 1958, Poland recognized that it had lost 369 hectares in the transaction, and in 1989, it decided to renew the dispute. In 2005, Poland demanded compensation from the Czech government, and, in 2007, the Czech government decided to grant it.

Officials in the affected towns are already resisting the changes, which are likely to affect all Bohemian and Moravian regions that border Poland.