US President-elect Barack Obama will go ahead with plans to build part of a controversial missile defence system on Polish soil, Poland has announced.
President Lech Kaczynski's office said the pledge was made during a telephone conversation between the two men, BBC reports.
Russia opposes the US plans, and early this week said it planned to deploy missiles on Poland's border and electronically jam the US system.
This is the first signal that Mr Obama plans to continue George Bush's policy.
During the US election campaign, Mr Obama said he wanted to review the system to build a missile defence system in central Europe to ensure it would be effective and would not target Russia.
Moscow says the plan to locate 10 interceptor missiles in northern Poland and a tracking radar in the Czech Republic will do exactly that.
In his first state of the nation address earlier this week, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said Moscow would neutralise the system by deploying short-range missiles in its western enclave of Kaliningrad on Poland's border.
The US military insists the shield is incapable of destroying Russian rockets and is designed solely to knock down long-range missiles fired from the Middle East.
This is also the first signal from the US president-elect that he has no intention of backing down in the face of the Russian threats.