Poland wins US support for regional counter-terrorism summit next month

Poland will next month host a counter-terrorism summit for Central and Easte rn European countries, after President Aleksander Kwasniewski won United Sta tes backing for the idea. National Security Adviser Marek Siwiec said both U S President George W. Bush and NATO candidates who met last week in Bulgaria had backed the idea as a regional response to last month's suicide attacks o n New York and Washington. "The idea was positively accepted by President Bu sh, and we can count on US attendance at the conference," Siwiec told a news briefing in Warsaw. The conference is expected to be held in early November and may include countries from the former Soviet Union, Siwiec said. In supp ort of US-led actions against Afghanistan, Poland has opened its airspace to the US air force and has offered to deploy troops to replace US soldiers on peacekeeping duty in the Balkans. (Reuters)