Poland, US on cusp of deal to step up military presence: aide

Krzysztof Szczerski, chief of staff to President Andrzej Duda, said the deal could be announced when the two countries’ leaders meet at the White House next month.

Szczerski added that Polish President Andrzej Duda’s June 12 meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington could mark a "watershed" in Poland’s efforts to secure a stepped-up US military presence.

“There is a good chance that in June we will be able to hear from the two presidents about decisions on the shape and form of such an increased presence of American troops in Poland,” Szczerski told a group of Polish media correspondents after holding talks with US officials at the White House.

While at the White House on Tuesday, Szczerski talked with officials including Charles Kupperman, President Trump’s deputy national security advisor, Poland’s PAP news agency reported.

Duda and Trump will meet in Washington on June 12 to discuss “the growing United States-Poland strategic partnership and a range of mutual interests, including defense, security, energy, and trade matters,” the White House press secretary said in a statement this month.

The Reuters news agency last week cited officials as saying that the expected Polish-US deal would not resemble Duda’s original request for a permanent American base in Poland dubbed “Fort Trump” by the media.

Reuters reported that two US officials have said Washington and Warsaw were close to a deal that would see the number of non-permanent American troops in Poland increase by between 1,000 and 1,500.

Around 4,500 rotating US troops are stationed in Poland on average as part of a NATO force, the agency noted.

Following Moscow's annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014, NATO decided at a Warsaw summit in July 2016 to deploy four rotating multinational battalions to Poland and the Baltic states.

(gs)

Source: PAP, IAR