Sikorski exits the battle

The anticipated changes in the government started with a bang last week as Defense Minister Radosław Sikorski submitted his resignation on Monday. The Prime Minister accepted it and Sikorski was promptly replaced by Aleksander Szczygło - the head of the President's Chancellery. The Minister did not give a direct reason for Sikorski's resignation.

However, a long-running argument over the role of the Military Counter-Intelligence Services (SKW) is considered to have been the main reason for the Minister's decision to step down. It was no secret that Sikorski did not get on with the head of the SKW, Deputy Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz, and he confirmed having recently asked the President to dismiss Macierewicz.

The SKW is responsible for gathering intelligence for Polish troops going to Afghanistan. "In order to send soldiers into a conflict, the Minister of Defense must have decision-making, institutional and personnel powers, and I have had difficulties with that recently," Sikorski explained. Macierewicz's SKW is only formally subordinate to the Ministry of Defense. In reality the Prime Minister is in charge of it.

It is rumored that the Kaczyński twins also disagreed with Sikorski on the decommunization of the army, seeing him as too slow to remove old communist officials. While Macierewicz is filling the SKW with new personnel, Sikorski wanted experienced soldiers and intelligence agents to go to Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński said that he and the President didn't agree with Sikorski on the Ministry's activities and that the former Minister's opinion of the situation in the highest ranks of the military was incorrect.

Kaczyński expressed a wish that Sikorski stay in the "PiS orbit" and promised that he would have a serious proposal for him, which would be available in about six months' time.