Presidential aides to US next week
National Security Bureau (BBN) head Pawel Soloch and President Andrzej Duda's cabinet head Krzysztof Szczerski will travel to the US next week for talks with members of the US Administration.
Among the discussed topics will be a possible meeting between the US and Polish state heads.
Soloch will depart to Washington on Sunday and will remain there until Thursday. Soloch told PAP that together with Szczerski he will speak with the US State Department's Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon and Trump's national security aide Herbert McMaster.
Paweł Soloch added that the talks will probably focus on decision at the recent Warsaw NATO summit, bilateral cooperation in security and prospects for a meeting between the US and Polish presidents.
In the US Paweł Soloch will also meet a Pentagon official and think tank heads Kimberly Kagan, Phillip Karber and Bruce Hoffman, respectively presidents of the Institute for the Study of War, the Jamestown Foundation and the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University. He will also meet Congressmen, representatives of US armament producers seeking contracts in Poland, and hold talks in UN seat in New York.
Soloch said that he also planned to meet Poland's new defence attache in Washington General Cezary Wisniewski. Wisniewski's appointment follows a protracted vacancy on the post which was the subject of a letter by the Polish president to the Polish defence minister.
In February in Washington, Szczerski presented President Trump with President Andrzej Duda's and Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic's joint invitation to visit Poland. As stated therein, the leaders of Poland and Croatia would like to invite President Trump to July's Three Sea Initiative Forum in Wroclaw, southwestern Poland. The initiative is a joint initiative by the Presidents of Poland and Croatia consisting in the enhancement of the Central and Eastern European countries' cooperation in the areas of energy, transport, digitisation and economy.
The last official meeting between a Polish National Security Bureau head and a security aide to the US President took place in 2007 on the sidelines of then Polish President Lech Kaczynski's Washington talks with President George W. Bush. At the time the BBN head was Wladyslaw Stasiak and the US President's security aide Stephen Hadley.
Past security advisors to the US President include Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and Susan Rice. Herbert McMaster was appointed to the post after his predecessor Michael Flynn's February 13 resignation over concealment of earlier contacts with the Russian Ambassador in Washington.
On Wednesday Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski was in Washington on the first official bilateral visit since the beginning of the Trump presidency. On Friday House of Representatives head Paul Ryan will speak with Polish President Andrzej Duda and PM Beata Szydlo.
Source: PAP