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Potrzebny artykul z Financial Times - ktos pomoze?
Potrzebuje artykul o tytule : " Poland ready to march on to world stage " z 30. 12. 2005 roku, niestety, zeby przeczytac ten artykul na stronie timesa trzeba sie zarejestrowac do czego potrzebna jest karta kredytowa. Bede wdzieczny za pomoc.
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Chyba nikt się nie obrazi jak wkleję:
Poland ready to march on to world stage
By Peter Spiegel in London, Jan Cienski in Warsaw, and Neil MacDonald in Baghdad
Published: December 30 2005 02:00 | Last updated: December 30 2005 02:00
Four months ago, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute - a Washington-based think tank known for neo-conservative ideas - wrote a treatise urging US financial backing for further deployments of eastern European troops in Iraq, citing Poland as a particularly attractive candidate.
"The Polish military, unlike the public, is upbeat about its service in Iraq, recognising that the mission has done wonders for the army's preparedness," the AEI scholar wrote. "Does it always make sense to hire private contractors, with all their legal and political baggage, when you could have real soldiers for less money?"
It was a prescient suggestion. The writer, Radoslaw Sikorski, has since traded Washington for Warsaw, and in October became defence minister in Poland's new centre-right government, which on Tuesday recommended extending the country's deployment in Iraq for another year.
The decision, which reverses the recently defeated leftist government's plan to withdraw all Polish forces next month, has been criticised at home, where opposition to the operation continues to rise, despite the new plan, which would reduce troops from 1,500 to 900 by March.
But in Washington, where Poland has been second only to the UK in its symbolic importance to keeping the Iraq mission an international project, the decision has been greeted with great warmth, where officials say that Poland's prominence in Iraq has not only invigorated bilateral relations, but raised Poland's geopolitical standing on the world stage.
"What Poland has done is decided it wants to be a strategic player," said Kurt Volker, the number two official in the State Department's European bureau. "People always make the assumption a country does this to please the US . . . Poland sees this as valuable in itself for the role it can play globally."
Poland, along with the UK and Australia, were the only international partners to provide combat troops for the invasion of Iraq. It has since commanded a multinational division based in the south-central city of Diwaniya, now one of the most stable regions in the country. In that role, it has overseen the troops of at least a dozen countries and trained the Iraqi army's 8th Division.
The deployment has cost Poland money and personnel, however, with 17 soldiers killed, 45 seriously wounded, and financial costs of about $600m - a high price for a country with a $6bn (€5bn, £3.5bn) defence budget.
And while the deployment has given Poland international prominence, Mr Sikorski has also attempted to use the decision to win more US military aid, making the push most recently in meetings at the Pentagon this month.
The US has already spent about $300m assisting the Polish mission. Because Poland does not have its own long-range military transports, the US helped fly Polish troops and ship equipment to Iraq. In theatre, the US has supplied fuel, food and occasionally trucks and other vehicles.
But while the costs have been high, the new Polish government insists the Iraq deployment has also benefited the military, raising the level of training and operational experience to unprecedented levels. Officials also say the experience of commanding thousands of troops from other countries - including Spain, Romania and Bulgaria - has given once-parochial military leaders a new global perspective.
"The Polish army has gained enormous international experience," said Piotr Paszkowski, defence ministry spokesman. "From being a fairly isolated military, it has become capable of international co-operation."
But the Iraqi experience has also, in some ways, been a disappointment to Polish leaders. Officials have in the past suggested their country expected contracts for Polish companies as part of the US-led reconstruction of Iraq as a way of offsetting some military costs.
Not only have those contracts been few and far between, but a major Polish state-owned arms supplier that did get such a deal, Bumar, is now implicated in an Iraqi contracting scandal involving the interim government of the former prime minister Iyad Allawi.
Ziad Cattan, an Iraqi exile with Polish citizenship, signed 38 contracts with Bumar, worth more than $400m, for military equipment, including 36 mostly Russian-made helicopters that have supposedly proven faulty. Some of the helicopters are more than 25 years old - past their sell-by date, according to Iraq's corruption commission, which opened cases against Mr Cattan and Hazem Shaalan, then defence minister.
Mr Cattan, who sold used cars and other civilian merchandise in Poland before being appointed by US administrators as chief of procurement for the interim defence ministry, denies any wrongdoing. Bumar and the Polish authorities also deny the Iraqi allegations of improper dealings.
Iraqi officials say that around $500m from the defence budget was wasted, impairing efforts to prepare the Iraqi army to take over the lead security role from US and other foreign forces.
Reporting by Peter Spiegel, Jan Cienski, and Neil MacDonald