Artykuł pochodzi z pisma "New Warsaw Express"

Poland is expected to contribute some 200 troops to the American-led effort to bring down Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. The US launched its first strikes on Thursday morning. The day before the attack began, President Aleksander Kwasniewski bid farewell to the 4th Chemical Warfare regiment, which is set to depart for the Iraqi theatre of operations on Friday.

“There are moments in history when, to save peace, one has to fight,” he told journalists at a news conference on Tuesday. Prime Minister Leszek Miller on Thursday presided over a meeting of the government’s crisis management team, but issued a calming statement afterwards. In it he said that there was no direct threat to Polish territory, but that security round buildings and installations of strategic importance would be increased. The same day the Okecie international airport in Warsaw said it would step up security checks of both baggage and passengers.

Besides chemical warfare specialists, Poland is sending soldiers from the GROM special forces unit, as well as logistics and support personnel. According to Defence Ministry spokesman Eugeniusz Mleczak, the chemical warfare troops will be stationed outside Iraqui territory, while GROM soldiers will be used for special assignments. A Polish support ship, the ORP Czernicki, is already in the Persian Gulf. The president estimated that Poland ill spend about zl.22m on its part in the
war.

At Tuesday’s conference, Kwasniewski also said that Iraq’s defiance of UN Security Council resolution 1441 and the failure of diplomatic means to force the country to give up its chemical and biological weapons have made it necessary to disarm by force. Kwasniewski supported the US claim that the UN resolution justified military intervention, and that no further resolutions were necessary before the invasion.

He also reiterated earlier statements that a military operation in Iraq was a logical continuation of the US-led “war on terrorism”, which Poland had supported from the beginning. Poland is often seen as the United States’ chief supporter in Central Europe, even earning the epithet of America’s Trojan horse in the EU. Kwasniewski’s good personal relations with US President George W. Bush were cemented by Poland’s strong support for US action after the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Poland’s support for a military intervention in Iraq has raised the ire of France and Germany, which have opposed the move. France’s President Jacques Chirac recently told Polish politicians they had “missed a chance to keep quiet” after Prime Minister Leszek Miller signed a letter supporting the US stance in the conflict along with seven other European leaders. On the opposite side of the political spectrum, the decision to contribute troops has also enraged the anti-European, Catholicnationalist League of Polish Families (LPR), whose leaders claim that the president had no right to send soldiers without parliamentary consent and criticised the American decision to intervene militarily.

“Only parliament can decide about going to war, and the act of sending Polish soldiers to Iraq is a declaration of war,” the LPR’s Zbigniew Pek told journalists. The highly-trained and well-equipped GROM unit is the pride and joy of Poland’s armed forces. Formed under Tadeusz Mazowiecki’s first non-communist goverment, it won its first battle stripes in Haiti in support of the American intervention in 1994. GROM soldiers have served during UN and NATO operations in former Yugoslavia and, most recently, Afghanistan. The unit has recently come into the news again after many of its soldiers began resigning on the back of heavy pay cuts.

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