97silverlsc
Dedicated LVC Member
Sounds like it's time to take that country up on their offer to send monkeys!!
Vowing Iraq Pullback, Polish Leader Wins Vote
By Judy Dempsey
International Herald Tribune
Saturday 16 October 2004
Warsaw - Prime Minister Marek Belka of Poland narrowly survived a vote of confidence on Friday after telling Parliament that "we will not stay in Iraq an hour longer than is needed."
"Poland will reduce its contingent from the start of 2005 and will discuss subsequent reductions," Belka said Friday during a speech to Parliament.
Government officials said Belka's speech to the Sejm, the Polish lower house of Parliament, could be an acute embarrassment to President George W Bush. The American president, in the first of his televised debates with Senator John Kerry, the Democratic challenger, praised President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland for sending troops to Iraq.
Bush made a point during the first debate to tell Kerry that Poland backed the U.S. in the Iraqi conflict.
While telling the Sejm that he would like to start withdrawing some of the 2,500 troops as early as next year, Belka stressed that their withdrawal should not lead to instability.
Poland, a staunch ally of the United States, broke ranks with several of its European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners by openly supporting the war in Iraq and by sending troops to head one of the multinational divisions in central Iraq.
The Bush administration welcomed Poland's participation and the support of other Eastern European countries, including Romania and Bulgaria.
Such support prompted the U.S secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, to describe Europe as being divided between the "new Europe," those who supported the U.S. decision for regime change in Iraq, and the "old Europe," led by France and Germany, which opposed the war even when the Pentagon was drawing up the plans.
Polish public opinion in recent months has questioned the conduct of the war as well as the economic and financial costs.
More than 75 percent of those surveyed in Poland have said they are against Polish participation in the U.S.-led operation in Iraq.
Opposition parties have tapped into this sentiment to try to oust Belka, a former economist who served as an adviser to the coalition provisional authority in Iraq until this year.
Even Kwasniewski said this year that he felt "misled" over the reasons for going to war, like the existence of weapons of mass destruction, an argument the United States and Britain had used to attack Iraq and oust President Saddam Hussein.
Belka, a leftist economist who is not affiliated with any political party, was fighting for his political survival just five months after taking up the post. He succeeded Leszek Miller, leader of the Democratic Left Alliance, or SDL. This party inherited Poland's former Communist Party.
After a spate of corruption scandals, Miller resigned on May 1, the day Poland, along with nine other countries, joined the EU.
On Friday evening, after hours of haggling over voting procedure and whiffs of yet another privatization scandal that involves the ruling Democratic Left Alliance, Belka narrowly survived the confidence vote. He won, 234 to 460, enough to secure victory and put off elections until May, a time frame that Belka proposed this week.
He also managed to make deals with several small parties, with Iraq one of the issues that tipped the balance toward his favor and kept him in power for another few months.
Belka this week said fresh parliamentary elections could be held in May, several months before the presidential elections.
Weeks into the job as prime minister, Belka, who had to lead a Democratic Left Alliance-led minority government, was soon facing mounting pressure from opposition parties and the public to take a clear stance on when to bring Polish troops home from Iraq.
His victory Friday, however, could be short-lived, because Polish opposition parties, ranging from the far-right to center-right liberals, will keep Iraq on top of the political agenda in the coming weeks.
A senior Defense Ministry official said Friday that "we hope to have the troops out by the end of the year. That, at least, is my hope."
Janusz Zemke, secretary of state for defense and deputy defense minister, added: 'I cannot give you the final date. It will be a process of phasing down. It will be fully dependent on the situation in Iraq and the process of normalization."
Vowing Iraq Pullback, Polish Leader Wins Vote
By Judy Dempsey
International Herald Tribune
Saturday 16 October 2004
Warsaw - Prime Minister Marek Belka of Poland narrowly survived a vote of confidence on Friday after telling Parliament that "we will not stay in Iraq an hour longer than is needed."
"Poland will reduce its contingent from the start of 2005 and will discuss subsequent reductions," Belka said Friday during a speech to Parliament.
Government officials said Belka's speech to the Sejm, the Polish lower house of Parliament, could be an acute embarrassment to President George W Bush. The American president, in the first of his televised debates with Senator John Kerry, the Democratic challenger, praised President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland for sending troops to Iraq.
Bush made a point during the first debate to tell Kerry that Poland backed the U.S. in the Iraqi conflict.
While telling the Sejm that he would like to start withdrawing some of the 2,500 troops as early as next year, Belka stressed that their withdrawal should not lead to instability.
Poland, a staunch ally of the United States, broke ranks with several of its European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners by openly supporting the war in Iraq and by sending troops to head one of the multinational divisions in central Iraq.
The Bush administration welcomed Poland's participation and the support of other Eastern European countries, including Romania and Bulgaria.
Such support prompted the U.S secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, to describe Europe as being divided between the "new Europe," those who supported the U.S. decision for regime change in Iraq, and the "old Europe," led by France and Germany, which opposed the war even when the Pentagon was drawing up the plans.
Polish public opinion in recent months has questioned the conduct of the war as well as the economic and financial costs.
More than 75 percent of those surveyed in Poland have said they are against Polish participation in the U.S.-led operation in Iraq.
Opposition parties have tapped into this sentiment to try to oust Belka, a former economist who served as an adviser to the coalition provisional authority in Iraq until this year.
Even Kwasniewski said this year that he felt "misled" over the reasons for going to war, like the existence of weapons of mass destruction, an argument the United States and Britain had used to attack Iraq and oust President Saddam Hussein.
Belka, a leftist economist who is not affiliated with any political party, was fighting for his political survival just five months after taking up the post. He succeeded Leszek Miller, leader of the Democratic Left Alliance, or SDL. This party inherited Poland's former Communist Party.
After a spate of corruption scandals, Miller resigned on May 1, the day Poland, along with nine other countries, joined the EU.
On Friday evening, after hours of haggling over voting procedure and whiffs of yet another privatization scandal that involves the ruling Democratic Left Alliance, Belka narrowly survived the confidence vote. He won, 234 to 460, enough to secure victory and put off elections until May, a time frame that Belka proposed this week.
He also managed to make deals with several small parties, with Iraq one of the issues that tipped the balance toward his favor and kept him in power for another few months.
Belka this week said fresh parliamentary elections could be held in May, several months before the presidential elections.
Weeks into the job as prime minister, Belka, who had to lead a Democratic Left Alliance-led minority government, was soon facing mounting pressure from opposition parties and the public to take a clear stance on when to bring Polish troops home from Iraq.
His victory Friday, however, could be short-lived, because Polish opposition parties, ranging from the far-right to center-right liberals, will keep Iraq on top of the political agenda in the coming weeks.
A senior Defense Ministry official said Friday that "we hope to have the troops out by the end of the year. That, at least, is my hope."
Janusz Zemke, secretary of state for defense and deputy defense minister, added: 'I cannot give you the final date. It will be a process of phasing down. It will be fully dependent on the situation in Iraq and the process of normalization."