ROUNDUP: Poland's Sikorski Quits Over Afghanistan Risks

Poland's Defence Minister Radoslaw Sikorski quit Monday over what he termed "difficulties" in reducing the risk for 1,000 Polish troops soon to be deployed in a dangerous NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.

Sikorski, said he quit because he "lacked the instruments" to minimize the grave risks the troops would faced in what he called Poland's "most dangerous mission since WWII."

According to an unconfirmed Monday report in Poland's Dziennik daily, the 44-year old had been unhappy with Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's choice of long-time fellow Law and Justice (PiS) party member Antoni Macierewicz as head of Poland's military counter- intelligence services.

Macierewicz has been roundly criticized for doing a sloppy job of reforming Poland's military spy agency. The move was taken by the Kaczynski government in a bid to update and "de-communise" the organization, which had not been overhauled since the 1989 fall of communism.

Analysts in Warsaw suggested Sikorski had quit over difficulties in obtaining accurate intelligence from Afghanistan while preparing the troop deployment.

Sikorski's resignation also comes as Poland is preparing to open controversial talks with the United States on the possible stationing of US anti-missile bases on Polish soil.

It remained unclear Monday who Kaczynski would name to replace Sikorski, widely seen as a highly competent minister of defence.

Aleksander Szczyglo, chief of the chancellery of the president, was seen Monday evening as possible successor and could be nominated for the position as soon as Wednesday TVN 24 reported.

Having worked in conservative think-tanks in Washington DC between 2002-05, Sikorski is regarded as having good contacts at the White House.

He began his career as a Solidarity student activist in communist Poland, which led him into exile as a political refugee and into studies at Oxford University in Britain in the early 1980s.

Sikorski is well aware of the risks troops face on the ground in Afghanistan as he reported on the Soviet invasion of that country during the latter part of the 1980s.

One thousand Polish troops are due to be deployed in coming weeks as part of the 30,000-troop UN-mandated NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.
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