WARSAW, May 18 (Reuters) – Transatlantic unity must survive the current difficult time, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Monday, as he stressed the importance \u200cof Warsaw’s ties to Washington after the Pentagon cancelled plans to deploy \u200c4,000 U.S.-based troops to Poland.<\/p>\n
Poland has long seen its ties with the United States as the cornerstone of \u200bits security in the face of what it says is an increasingly assertive Russia. The government has publicly sought to reassure citizens that the cancelled deployment does not mean the alliance is at risk.<\/p>\n
“The task of all of us here in Poland, in Europe, across \u200cthe Atlantic, in the U.S., \u2060in Canada, is to ensure that transatlantic cooperation, regardless of various political variables, survives this difficult period,” Tusk told a news conference.<\/p>\n
Poland \u2060has stressed its role as a model ally, and is NATO’s biggest defence spender relative to the size of its economy. Warsaw plans to spend 4.8% of gross domestic product on \u200bdefence in \u200b2026.<\/p>\n
Tusk was speaking at the signing of \u200ban agreement with U.S. company Honeywell \u200cto establish an engine service centre for Abrams tanks, a deal he said exemplified the value of the transatlantic alliance.<\/p>\n
“You have a friend here … you have the most loyal ally,” Tusk said, addressing the U.S. “It’s worth remembering this, because America won’t find a better ally anywhere.”<\/p>\n
Polish public confidence in the alliance with the U.S. has declined since Donald \u200cTrump came to power. An SW Research poll \u200bfor the Rzeczpospolita daily in January showed that 53% \u200bof Poles did not believe \u200bthe U.S. was a reliable ally.<\/p>\n
In April, Tusk told the Financial Times \u200cthat Europe’s “biggest, most important question” is \u200bwhether the United States \u200bis ready to be a loyal NATO partner in case of a Russian attack.<\/p>\n
Allies of Poland’s Trump-endorsed nationalist President Karol Nawrocki criticised those comments, saying it \u200bwas dangerous to cast doubt \u200con the U.S. commitment to Poland’s security.<\/p>\n
In September, Trump said the U.S. could \u200bincrease its troop presence in Poland.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk and Alan Charlish, \u200bediting by Gus Trompiz and Nick Zieminski)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WARSAW, May 18 (Reuters) – Transatlantic unity must survive the current difficult time, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,11454,11450,22455,22454],"class_list":["post-50047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-donald-tusk","tag-poland","tag-polish-prime-minister","tag-transatlantic-alliance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}