Poland, US strike deal on air force deployment

Staunch ally Warsaw has signed a deal with Washington on the deployment from 2013 of US aircraft and training staff to Poland to help bolster its military capacity, the defence ministry said Monday. "The memorandum foresees the deepening of the cooperation between the Polish and US Air Forces through the rotational deployment to Poland of the US multi-task F-16 aircraft and C-130 transport aircraft, supported the US Air Force's Aviation Detachment deployed on a continuous basis," the ministry said in a statement. It said there would be four annual rotations of aircraft and trainers, two of them involving F-16 fighters, with the first rotation of aircraft taking place in 2013. While it did not specify where the US aircraft and staff would be deployed, it said that the rotations would be at bases where the Polish air force already has similar aircraft. Plans for the deal were announced on the eve of a May 27-28 visit to Poland by US President Barack Obama. Last year saw the first three rotations of unarmed training batteries of US Patriot missiles in Poland, which Warsaw's Cold War-era master Moscow slammed. Four rotations are planned this year. Obama, working to maintain the "reset" in ties with Moscow launched after he came to power in 2009, has revamped a missile-defence project pushed by his predecessor George W. Bush which sparked Russian ire. But Washington still plans to deploy elements of an anti-missile system in Romania and Poland by 2015 and 2018 respectively. Washington says the goal is to ward off threats from so-called rogue states like Iran, but Moscow dubs the plan a security threat. Ex-communist countries such as Poland which have joined NATO since the alliance began expanding in eastern Europe in 1999 see US ties as their main security bulwark and have contributed troops in return. Poland sent forces to Iraq as part of Bush's "coalition of the willing" and is a major contributor in Afghanistan.