Tri-Service

Poland Wants NATO-Russia Deal Scrapped

Poland's recent call to scrap a 1997 deal on NATO-Russia ties that stops the alliance from permanently installing military bases in Polish soil is 'extraordinarily dangerous" and "provocative".

Poland's new right-wing Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski insisted in an interview published Wednesday that the deal must go because it causes "inequality" between new and older NATO members.

The 1997 document stipulates that older NATO members "have no intention, no plan and no reason to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new members" like ex-communist Poland.

Russia has long insisted this provision also rules out permanent bases and troop deployments.

"We consider these statements to be extraordinarily dangerous and exceptionally provocative," Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

Waszczykowski told the liberal Gazeta Wyborcza daily: "We demand an equal level of security" between older and new NATO members, he added.

"NATO cannot have two levels of security, namely one for Western Europe with US troops, with military bases and defense installations and another for Poland, without these elements.

"Poland is Russia's neighbor and this is why we're speaking up."

In 1999, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary joined NATO ranks in what was a landmark moment. They became the first ex-communist states to do so as the Western alliance expanded into Warsaw Pact territory previously controlled by Moscow during the Soviet era.

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Subsequent waves of expansion saw 12 formerly communist states join NATO.

Russia has long opposed the expansion in the area it still considers a backyard.

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