Military ties top agenda in Obama's Poland talks

Military ties with staunch ally Poland topped the agenda Saturday when US President Barack Obama wrapped up his European tour, as he reaffirmed missile-defence plans that have angered Russia. Fresh from the G8 economic summit in France, and after stops in Ireland and Britain, Obama reassured east European allies that cooperation over missile defence with their Soviet-era master Moscow does not mean NATO will cede partial control to Russia. He also insisted the plans contested by Moscow are no threat to Russia's security. "We believe that missile defence is something we should be cooperating in with the Russians because we share external threats," Obama told reporters after meeting with Poland's President Bronislaw Komorowski. "This would not be a threat to the strategic balance," he insisted. "But we think it is very important that NATO remains in charge of NATO defence capabilities. That's one of the central principles of NATO." With Obama working to maintain the "reset" in ties with Moscow launched after he came to power in 2009, he met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev Thursday at the G8. "I'm very proud of the reset process that has helped to stabilise relations between the United States and Russia, and President Medvedev I think has been an important partner in this process," he said in Warsaw. But discord over missile defence was revealed again at the G8 when Medvedev said it may not be put to rest until he and Obama are gone from the political scene. Ex-communist Romania and Poland have agreed to host part of a revamped US missile shield, with deployment planned by 2015 and 2018 respectively, to ward off threats from so-called rogue states like Iran. An earlier plan pushed by Obama's predecessor George W. Bush sparked barbs between Moscow and Washington rarely seen since the Cold War ended two decades ago. In an olive branch to Moscow, the US programme has been folded into NATO missile-defence plans, into which there have been steps to bring Russia. But that raises jitters in countries under the Kremlin's thumb until 1991. Kremlin talk of a "sectoral approach" -- jargon for different players having their zones of missile-defence coverage -- for some east European nations seems an echo of the past. Ex-communist countries which have joined NATO since the trans-Atlantic alliance began expanding behind the former Iron Curtain in 1999 see US ties as a security bulwark. Poland, one of Washington's most vocal European allies, sent troops to Iraq as part of Bush's "coalition of the willing" and is a major contributor in Afghanistan with a 2,600-strong deployment. It has been seeking to bolster defence ties further via a US military presence. Ahead of Saturday's talks, a senior Obama adviser said US F-16 fighter jets and Hercules transport aircraft would be deployed in Poland on a rotating basis and an aviation detachment stationed permanently. Last year saw the first three rotations of unarmed training batteries of US Patriot missiles in Poland, a move which also sparked Russia's ire. Four rotations are planned this year. After arriving in Warsaw Friday, Obama joined a summit of presidents from ex-communist nations, whose two decades of democratic and market reforms he said could offer lessons for the Arab Spring. Warsaw recently sent Polish democracy icon Lech Walesa to advise Tunisia's new administration. Obama had hoped to meet Saturday with Walesa, the leader of the Solidarity movement which pushed Warsaw's communist regime from power bloodlessly in 1989 and was president from 1990 to 1995. But 1983 Nobel Peace Prize winner Walesa snubbed an invitation to meet 2009 laureate Obama along with other players in Poland's transition, saying it "would only amount to a photo opportunity". Walesa said he wished the US president well and hoped to meet some day, but that he fly to Italy Saturday as planned.