Minister Sikorski meets with Russian NGO groups: photo - PAP/Pawel Supernak
“Experience has taught us that if Russia threatens us, we take it seriously,” Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in an interview with the Echo of Moscow radio station.
Sikorski's remarks referred to the Kremlin's plans to install a missile-defence system on in Kaliningrad, by the Polish border.
In late November, Russian leader President Dimitry Medvedev reaffirmed that if the US creates a missile -defence system on Polish soil, the Kaliningrad project will go ahead.
Sikorski said that he was disappointed by the renewal of Russian “threats” last month.
“We thought that that way of thinking was behind us,” he said.
“Poland is the last country that wants a return to the arms race,” he claimed.
Washington, alongside Warsaw, has always argued that the proposed missile system in Poland was a defensive measure against “rogue states” such as Iran.
The initial project was signed in August 2008 at the tail-end of George Bush's presidency, but Barack Obama put the concept on ice, backing a alternative, and mobile, system in its place.
Meanwhile, on other Polish-Russian affairs, Sikorski said that he was pleased that Russia was addressing the WWII Katyn massacre of 22,500 Polish citizens.
He said that Poland “appreciates the fact that Katyn is the first Stalinist crime to be condemned by the State Parliament.”
The condemnation took place in April 2010, just days after the Smolensk air tragedy in which Poland's presidential delegation crashed while on its way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Katyn. Some 96 people, including President Lech Kaczynski, perished in the accident.
While in Moscow, Sikorski signed an agreement that will ease border controls for Russian citizens in Kaliningrad and the northern Polish provinces of Pomerania and Warmia-Masuria.
Speaking to Moscow Echo radio, Sikorski said that “we prefer the concept of open borders, not the intimidation,” of an arms race. (nh/pg)
Source: PAP