The United States and Poland signed a deal on Wednesday to station elements of a US missile defense shield on Polish soil, a move certain to aggravate Russia-Western tensions over Moscow's intervention in Georgia. The agreement was signed by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski at a ceremony also attended by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and President Lech Kaczynski. The site in Poland hosting 10 interceptor rockets and a giant radar in neighboring Czech Republic will form the European part of a global system Washington says it is assembling to shoot down ballistic missiles it fears could be launched by “rogue” states or militant groups such as Al-Qaeda. “This is an agreement that will establish a missile defense site here in Poland that will help us to deal with the new threats of the 21st century, of long range missiles ... from countries like Iran or North Korea,” Rice told reporters. She described the signing as “a very special day” for Poland and the US. Russia sees the prospect of placing the shield in parts of central Europe that it used to control as a threat to its security. It says Washington and Warsaw rushed into finalizing the deal as a response to its military action in Georgia. Warsaw and Washington repeatedly denied this although Tusk at some stage said the events in Georgia showed Poland's concerns over its security need to be taken seriously by its US ally. Some Russian politicians and generals have said Poland must be prepared for a preventive attack on the site in the future – a threat that Washington has dismissed as empty rhetoric. NATO on Tuesday denounced threats against alliance member Poland as unacceptable. Poland, the biggest ex-Soviet satellite in central Europe, as well as the Baltic nations that were Soviet republics until 1991, have condemned Russia's strike against Georgis.
