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Referring to the interceptor deal with Poland Dr Rice insisted that the missile defence system would help to counter the “new threats” of the 21st century — the development of long-range ballistic missiles in North Korea and Iran. “It [the missile defence system] is defensive and is not aimed at anyone,” she said.

Lech Kaczynski, the Polish President, echoed her words, saying: “No one who has good intentions towards us and towards the Western world should be afraid of it.”

The timing of the signing ceremony, however, with thousands of Russian troops still in Georgia, could not have been more striking. The American and Polish Governments had been negotiating the deal for the past 18 months but the bargaining took on a greater sense of urgency when the Georgia conflict began.

The US has tried unsuccessfully to persuade Moscow that the plan to install a missile-tracking radar system in the Czech Republic and ten interceptors in northern Poland was not aimed at Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

Expert View

Iran is key to the whole anti-missile structure devised by the US, and now helped on its way by Poland

Michael Evans

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Last week General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, Russia’s deputy chief of the general staff, warned Poland that it could face a nuclear strike for hosting American interceptors. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Nato Secretary-General, described the remark as “pathetic rhetoric” at the end of the alliance’s foreign ministers’ emergency meeting on Georgia on Tuesday. Under the agreement that has been signed with Poland several hundred American troops will be stationed permanently in the country to service the antimissile system.

Other US personnel will be deployed to operate the 96 Patriot airdefence missiles that the Americans will provide to give added protection to the Poles. The Patriot troops will stay until Polish military specialists have been trained in their use.

In the final days of the negotiations, with the Georgia crisis making all the headlines, the Polish Government also won a guarantee from the Americans to go to its aid if Poland was attacked.

The signing of the deal between the US and Poland completes the final European component for a missile defence system. The Czech Republic gave the go-ahead recently to host a radar system capable of detecting and tracking a ballistic missile. The radar and interceptors should be in place by 2011-13.

The US selected Poland and the Czech Republic for the European element of the system because they were perceived to be in the most suitable location for helping to counter a missile attack by Iran. US intelligence believes that Iran will have a long-range ballistic missile capable of reaching America by 2015.

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