Foreign minister on Russia, international relations
President Vladimir Putin should know that the missile shield in Poland has no bearing on Russia's security, Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski has told PAP in an interview.
"President Putin should know very well that the missile shield in Poland has no relevance to Russian security", Waszczykowski said when asked about the Russian president's recent remark that Russia would be forced to take action to minimise the threat posed by the missile shield in Poland and Romania.
"The system is meant to protect Europe from a missile attack from the Middle East. The military presence of the Americans and multinational NATO units is, however, a response to the aggressive behaviour ... of the Russian authorities. This will be a defensive presence that poses no threat to Russia", he added.
Speaking about the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland's foreign minister said that work on the decisions of the summit had reached an important breakthrough stage. Political decisions made last week at the NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels hold that NATO's eastern flank should be reinforced with the physical presence of allied forces - "not just - as was assumed at the earlier Newport summit - the reinforcement of crisis intervention forces (the 'spearhead'), but 'crisis deterrence'", Waszczykowski said. (PAP)
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