Growing alarm spurs Poles to take missiles

WASHINGTON — The United States and Poland on Thursday reached a long-stalled deal to place a missile-defense facility on Polish soil, in the strongest reaction yet to Russia's military operation in Georgia.

Russia reacted in anger, saying the move would worsen relations already severely strained in the week since Russian troops entered separatist enclaves in Georgia, a close U.S. ally.

But the deal also reflected growing alarm in countries such as Poland, once a conquered Soviet client state, about a newly rich and powerful Russia's intentions in its former Cold War sphere of power. Negotiations dragged on for 18 months — but were completed only as old memories and new fears surfaced in recent days.

Those fears were codified to some degree in what U.S. officials characterized as unusual aspects of the final deal: that at least temporarily U.S. soldiers would staff missile sites in Poland oriented toward Russia, and that the United States would be obliged to defend Poland in case of an attack with greater speed than required under NATO, of which Poland is a member.

Polish officials said the agreement would strengthen the mutual commitment of the United States to defend Poland, and vice versa.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the agreement "a step toward real security for Poland in the future."

A sense of deepened suspicions — and the more darkly drawn lines between countries in the region — also were apparent in the emotional reaction from Russia over the deal.

"It is this kind of agreement, not the split between Russia and United States over the problem of South Ossetia, that may have a greater impact on the growth in tensions in Russian-American relations," Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the Russian parliament's foreign-affairs committee, told the Interfax news agency Thursday night in Moscow.

South Ossetia is the pro-Russian enclave inside Georgia where Russia sent troops last week, after a military crackdown by the pro-Western government in Georgia.

Under the agreement, Poland would host a U.S. base with 10 interceptors designed to shoot down a limited number of ballistic missiles, in theory launched by a future adversary such as Iran. Early-warning radar would be based in the Czech Republic.

In exchange for providing the base, Poland would receive what the two sides called "enhanced" security cooperation, notably a top-of-line Patriot air-defense system that can shoot down shorter-range missiles or attacking fighters or bombers.

A senior Pentagon official described an unusual part of this quid pro quo: An American Patriot battery would be moved to Poland from Germany, where it would be operated by the U.S. military. Expenses would be shared by both nations.

In that event, U.S. troops would join the Polish military, at least temporarily, at its front lines — facing eastward toward Russia.

Russia long has opposed the arrangement, saying the United States was violating post-Cold War agreements not to base troops in former Soviet states and of devising a Trojan-horse system really designed to counter Russia's nuclear arsenal, not a future attack by Iran or another adversary.

In Poland, the war in Georgia has dominated the front pages of newspapers, where it has been starkly characterized as Russian invaders attacking Georgia.

"We are worried that we are facing, under the strong arm of Russia, a situation where some kind of understanding would be reached that Russia would be given a free hand in the region," said Eugeniusz Smolar, director of the Center for International Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in Warsaw.