By Marina Malenic

A top Polish official yesterday urged the incoming Obama administration to continue plans for installing ballistic missile defense interceptors in his country.

“Naturally, we would like to see this project continue,” Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish Foreign Minister, told the Atlantic Council in Washington.

The Bush administration has signed deals with Poland and the Czech Republic to install interceptor missiles and a radar system on their respective territories as the third leg of the U.S. Ground-based Midcourse Defense System, which Washington has said is aimed primarily at Iran’s missile build-up.

Russia has voiced loud and frequent opposition to the plan, with President Dmitry Medvedev most recently threatening to deploy a short-range missile system in the Kaliningrad region bordering Poland and Lithuania in response to the potential U.S. basing.

Sikorski called Medvedev’s move a “mistake.”

“I think to welcome the new U.S. president and [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] allies of the U.S. with missiles was a mistake,” he said.

The U.S. missile defense system “would enhance American presence in Europe and produce strong ties between central Europe and the U.S.,” he added. “Let me also note that NATO has agreed that such a system will be useful for the protection of Europe against a possible ballistic missile threat.”

However, Obama and congressional Democrats have advocated detailed testing before any final decision to deploy the system. A bipartisan congressional delegation from the House Armed Services Committee is scheduled to visit Russia, the Czech Republic, and Poland next month (Defense Daily, Nov. 14).

Sikorski said Poland is willing to open the potential interceptor site to a stringent inspections regime to reassure Moscow of its intent.

“We are willing to go almost but not quite to the permanent stationing of Russian personnel in Poland,” he said. “The permanent stationing of Russian troops on our soil is something the public is sensitive about. But we would like to give…the kind of inspection rights and the kind of monitoring that to any reasonable person would give complete assurance.”

Some Russian generals have raised concerns about nuclear warheads being added to the interceptor missiles, and Sikorski said frequent inspections could dispel such rumors.

Sikorski also called for a reinvigoration of NATO, particularly in the face of a resurgent Russia.

“Over the last several years, NATO has transformed itself to meet the new challenges of the transatlantic community. It has expanded its mission beyond the treaty territory, taking on new commitments in places like the Balkans, Iraq and most notably Afghanistan,” he said. “Developing new expeditionary capabilities has been part of NATO’s transformation.

“While we are ready to continue our engagement in Afghanistan, we feel that the time has come to renew the essential role of NATO,” he added. “NATO should recover its traditional role, not just as an alliance, but as a military organization–and once again devote a portion of its energy to the treaty area.”

He called for better intelligence sharing, war gaming and contingency planning “that is not immobilized or gutted by political correctness.”

“We need to make the NATO guarantee credible again,” Sikorski said.

He also welcomed military basing in Poland beyond the missile defense interceptors.

“The NATO infrastructure should be more evenly spread over its territory,” he said. “That is not to provoke anybody, just that this is the way an alliance should grow.”