Cool the jets

While US President George W Bush was preoccupied with his party's mauling at the polls, US-Polish relations hit some rough waters. A deputy ambassador's faux pas, an accusation that Poland was misled into believing that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and a less-than-impressive delivery of American F-16s to Poland all soured Polish-American relations in the past week.

A leaked memorandum from a meeting between Kenneth Hillas, Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Poland, and Leszek Jesień, Secretary of State in the Prime Minister's Chancellery, was the first to raise Polish hackles. The document revealed that Hillas had criticized Deputy Prime Minister Roman Giertych's call for a public debate on Poland's participation in the war in Iraq and its effect on civilians, and claimed that if the Deputy Prime Minister of Germany, France or Denmark were to ever make such statements, they would be dismissed.

The comments were described as "unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of our country" by Giertych, and Prime Minister Kaczyński canceled a meeting with US Ambassador Victor Ashe in protest. Instead, Polish Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga summoned Ashe to a meeting to discuss the flap.

Perhaps more importantly, the leaked document also revealed sensitive information concerning the US and Poland's cooperation in North Korea. Poland's Internal Security Agency is now investigating the source of the leak.

Later, in an interview with the German daily Der Tagesspiegel, former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski claimed Poland had gone to war in Iraq based on faulty information. "Poland joined the war in Iraq on the basis of incorrect information on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction provided by the then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell," Kwaśniewski told the daily, adding that he would treat intelligence information "with more caution" in the future.

Finally, the delivery of four F-16 fighter jets to Poland hit a snag when technical problems that appeared while the jets were flying across the Atlantic forced the jets to turn back to the US. A second attempt was also less than successful, as two of the planes required an unscheduled stop in Iceland.

Though the jets finally did make it to Poland, the debacle led Deputy Economy Minister Paweł Poncyliusz to criticize the 2003 contract by which Poland bought the fighters, saying the offset deal had been poorly implemented by the US, and that Poland had made mistakes during the negotiations.