War in Caucasus made Poland deploy US missile defense quicker

Poland and the United States struck a deal Thursday that will strengthen military ties and put an American missile interceptor base in Poland.

The document was signed by the U.S. Undersecretary of State John Rood and Deputy Foreign Minister of Poland Andrzej Kremer.

The US is set to place anti-missile system in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptors in Poland as a defense from supposed missile threat from Iran.

Earlier the possible condition of the agreement with the US on the missile shield named by Warsaw was modernization of its army and anti-missile system with the help of Washington.

On July 8 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has signed a deal with her Czech counterpart, Karel Schwarzenberg, to base part of Washington's missile defense system in the Czech Republic. The United States plans to build a radar base in the Brdy military district, some 90 km southwest of the Czech capital Prague. The radar is to be ready in 2014.

Russia is strongly opposed to the missile defense system plan in eastern Europe, saying the plan poses a threat to its strategic interests. Russia said in such situation adequate steps would be taken to compensate the threat.

As the Russian Foreign Ministry noted then, if the agreements would be ratified by the Czech parliament, and deploying of the US antimissile system would start near the borders of Russia, Moscow would be forced to response “by military and technical, not diplomatic methods”.

August 6 Russian Ambassador to Belarus Alyaksandr Surikov didn’t exclude that Russia could review approached to military and technical cooperation with Belarus in case the US plans for deploying elements of anti-missile shield would ne realized.

The diplomat said that missile launchers Iskander or strategic bombers could be deployed in Belarus.

However he noted that Russia won’t return nuclear weapons to Belarus.