Poland will offer a
set of proposals designed to assure Russia that US plans to base a
missile-defence system in Eastern Europe will not pose a threat, dpa reported.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said his country will allow Russia to monitor and inspect the facility but not agree to a permanent presence of Russian
officials.
"We would like Russia to have the confidence that whatever we declare
might happen in those facilities is the case," Sikorski said Wednesday at
the Atlantic Council of the United States, a Washington think tank.
The United States plans to base 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic by 2013 to counter Iran's growing ballistic missile
threat.
Moscow views the deployment as an act of aggression that threatens its
strategic nuclear deterrent, and the issue has brought US-Russian relations to
their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said November 5 that Moscow will field
missiles in its Kaliningrad enclave in Eastern Europe in response to the US deployment.
Medvedev has expressed hope that when president-elect Barack Obama takes office
he will reverse President George W Bush's plans for missile defence. Obama has
been more skeptical of the deployment, but has not announced whether he will
proceed