National Security Bureau sums up outgoing year - News - National Security Bureau

31.12.2019

National Security Bureau sums up outgoing year

Tightening Polish-US ties, renewed participation in UN missions and technological upgrades in the armed forces were the main tasks in the outgoing year, National Security Bureau (BBN) head Paweł Soloch told PAP on Tuesday.

Addressing Polish-US relations, Paweł Soloch said that the "good chemistry" between Polish and US presidents Andrzej Duda and Donald Trump, respectively, resulted in two bilateral agreements and the raised presence of US forces in Poland. He added that tightening transatlantic ties has been a permanent element of Duda's policy from the start of his term of office.

Listing other major achievements in 2019, Soloch mentioned the broadscale modernisation of the army, most notably the planned purchase of US-made F-35 fighters, and Poland's renewed participation in UN peacekeeping missions.

Minister also mentioned the recent warming in Poland's relations with Belarus and Ukraine, especially the latter's agreement for Polish archeological teams to continue exhumations of Polish World War Two and communism victims on its territory.

The exhumations, overseen by Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), were halted in 2017 in retaliation for the disassembly of a memorial to the World War II Ukrainian Insurgent Army in eastern Poland. Poland holds the force responsible for the 1943-45 Volhynia Massacre in then eastern Poland, in which around 100,000 Poles were killed.

Source: PAP