Obama's Office Says `No Commitment' to Missile Shield in Poland
By Maciej Martewicz and Kristin Jensen
Nov. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama's office said the president-elect has made ``no commitment'' to a planned U.S. missile-defense system, after remarks on the Polish president's Web site suggested that Obama will press ahead with the shield.
Obama, in a telephone conversation with President Lech Kaczynski yesterday, said ``that the anti-missile shield project will be continued,'' according to a statement on Kaczynski's official Web site. Obama also ``expressed hope that the political and military cooperation between the two countries will be continued.''
Obama's office painted a different picture of the conversation.
``President Kaczynski raised missile defense, but President-elect Obama made no commitment on it,'' Denis McDonough, Obama's senior foreign policy adviser, said in a statement released to reporters. ``His position is as it was throughout the campaign, that he supports deploying a missile defense system when the technology is proved to be workable.''
Obama had a ``good conversation'' with Kaczynski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk about the ``important U.S.-Poland alliance,'' McDonough said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed an agreement with the Polish government in August pledging to modernize Poland's military in exchange for the former Soviet satellite hosting 10 interceptor missiles.
Since then, Polish lawmakers, a majority of whom are in favor of the shield, have expressed concern that an Obama administration might seek to postpone or cancel the system. The missiles are part of a defensive shield which includes a planned radar site in the Czech Republic that the U.S. says is necessary to protect against attack from ``rogue'' states such as Iran.
`We Don't Know'
``The American administration has changed. Whether the Americans' decisions will change, we don't know,'' Tusk said in an interview published in today's Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper. ``If the Americans decide to stop or suspend the project, for example because of financial reasons, we will just accept this information. We can't build it ourselves.''
Russia has repeatedly criticized the system as posing a threat to its territory. President Dmitry Medvedev said Nov. 5, just hours after Obama won the presidential election, that he would site short-range Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, a Russian region wedged between Poland and Lithuania, to ``neutralize'' the planned defense system.
``Mr. Medvedev's declaration confirms for us the necessity of strengthening Poland's security,'' Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told parliament in Warsaw yesterday. ``In our view, missile defense will strengthen our security.''
Michael McFaul, a Russia specialist at Stanford University who advised Obama during his presidential campaign, said last month that the U.S. should keep open negotiations with the Russian government on a missile-defense system for Europe, and also support Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization.
``We don't believe in trying to isolate Russia,'' McFaul said in a phone interview, stressing that he was giving his personal view and not that of Obama. ``Those kind of actions we see as counterproductive in dealing with Russia.''