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From: C-afp@clari.net (AFP / Michel Mrozinski)
Newsgroups: clari.world.europe.central,clari.world.organizations.misc,clari.world.europe,clari.world.organizations
Subject: Russia frowns as Poles to ratify NATO membership
Organization: Copyright 1999 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
Message-ID: <Qpoland-natoUR_QN_9FF@clari.net>
Lines: 71
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 7:25:11 PST
ACategory: international
Slugword: Poland-NATO
Threadword: poland
Priority: regular
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Xref: news.cs.columbia.edu clari.world.europe.central:14322 clari.world.organizations.misc:15658 clari.world.europe:44090 clari.world.organizations:32966

  	  				 
   WARSAW, Feb 15 (AFP) - The Polish parliament meeting Wednesday  
is due to give the final green light for the country to join NATO 
next month -- a move which will safely anchor Poland in the western 
camp but which Russia has only grudgingly accepted. 
   The deputies will vote to ratify the Accession Protocols after  
which these instruments of adherence will be signed by President 
Aleksander Kwasniewski on February 24. 
   Poland will formally join the Atlantic Alliance on March 12  
along with the Czech Republic and Hungary. 
   Ten years after the collapse of communism, the Poles regard  
their admission to NATO as an act of "historical justice" and the 
overwhelming majority of Polish citizens are in favour of joining. 
   With a territory two thirds bigger than Hungary and the Czech  
Republic, combined, Poland has the most strategic importance in the 
current enlargement process, both from the point of view of NATO and 
of Moscow. 
   Though forced to accept NATO plans to expand eastward into the  
former Soviet bloc, Russia has always sought to limit the military 
dimension of the process.  Moscow recently protested to Denmark over 
the deployment at Szczecin in northwest Poland of a 
Danish-German-Polish army corps. 
   Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen rejected the  
protest, saying the corps "does not violate accords signed between 
the Atlantic Alliance and Russia". 
   In December, Russian first deputy defence minister Nikolai  
Mikhailov, warned in Warsaw that Poland would be "committing a 
historic error" by encouraging NATO enlargement into the Baltic 
states and Ukraine. 
   But this is precisely what Poland wants to do and it has already  
begun setting up joint battalions with the Lithuanians and the 
Ukrainians. 
   While Ukraine has been diplomatically discreet in its attitude  
to NATO expansion, Lithuania has made no secret of its ambition to 
join the alliance.  Lithuanian Foreign Minister Algirdas Saudargas 
said in Lisbon last week that joining the European Union and NATO 
were priorities of his government. 
   "The shadow of Yalta (the town where the World War II victors  
carved up Europe into Soviet and western spheres of influence) will 
finally disappear when the signatures of the Polish Republic are 
placed at the bottom of the Washington Treaty," Polish Prime 
Minister Jerzy Buzek said in a letter to the US Senate and 
presidency following the ratification by the United States of NATO 
enlargement. 
   At a meeting last Friday and Saturday in Krakow, southern  
Poland, the defence ministers of France; Alain Richard, Germany; 
Rudolf Scharping and Poland; Janusz Onyszkiewicz, rejected as 
"unacceptable" a so-called "red line drawn by Moscow" between 
countries which it considers may join NATO and others which may 
not. 
   With Poland's NATO membership now in the bag politically, the  
military integration of Polish armed forces into the NATO military 
structure is set to take place progressively. The cost of this 
integration is estimate dby Warsaw at 1.5 billion dollars, spread 
over about 15 years. 
   In the first stage, Poland will place its 12th armoured division  
at the disposal of the NATO integrated military structure.  This 
will involve up to 20,000 men belonging to the German-Polish-Danish 
corps, Polish military sources said. 
   Two paratroop battalions each of some 500 men, a military  
hospital at Bydgoszcz in northwest Poland and a squadron of nine 
MiG-29 warplanes, will also be concerned by the move. 
   Next, the Polish navy will put ships and rescue helicopters  
under NATO command, along with several mine-sweepers. 
   Polish airspace is now protected by the US ASOC radar system  
which is compatible with all the systems used by European members of 
NATO. 
   Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary were invited to join NATO  
at its Madrid summit in July 1997. 
  	   	

