AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
Poland will boost its military contingent in Afghanistan from 120 troops to about 1,000 by next February, Defense Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has said in Washington.
“From February 2007, we will have just over 1,000 soldiers in Afghanistan,” he told Poland's TVN24 television Thursday.
“We are going to participate in operations in eastern Afghanistan.”
Polish officers will at the same time be integrated into the command structure of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a defense ministry communique said.
Poland's contingent in Afghanistan, currently 120 strong, is based in the northeastern town of Bagram, as will be the battalion arriving by February 2007, Sikorski said.
Poland had already said in 2005 that it would boost its troop strength in strife-ridden Afghanistan to 1000 troops, though in June Sikorski revised the total to around 500.
“The cost of the Afghanistan intervention is estimated at 300 million zlotys (72.5 million euros, 92 million dollars) and will be covered by Poland,” the communique said.
The new deployment of troops will not adversely effect Warsaw's commitment in Iraq, the statement said. Poland leads a contingent of 2000 troops — including 880 of their own — from 12 countries in Iraq.
NATO has been seeking to beef up ISAF to combat an increasingly virulent Taliban insurgency in southern Afghanistan, but at a meeting in Belgium Wednesday NATO countries made no formal offers of reinforcements.
This did not, however, mean that NATO's “Operation Medusa” — launched on September 2 against Taliban militia — was imperiled, said NATO spokesman James Appathurai.
NATO commander James Jones “is confident that there are enough troops on the ground to carry through” the operation, he added.
Jones nonetheless urgently requested last week that an additional 2,000 troops be sent to Afghanistan, noting that Taliban resistance has proven far more resilient than expected.
