Poland Fears it May be on a Nuclear Front Line

Reports of the redeployment of Russian nuclear arms in the Kaliningrad region along the Baltic Sea has rekindled fears in Poland of a nuclear menace along its borders. As communism collapsed both NATO and the Soviet Union withdrew forward-deployed nuclear weapons, leaving Poland in a comfortable non-nuclear zone in central Europe, but the country which joined NATO in 1999 now finds itself unsettled at the prospect of being on a front line. Polish officials have called for international verification of a report in the Washington Times earlier this week that quoted U.S. intelligence sources as saying that Russia has moved nuclear weapons into the enclave. Russia on Wednesday flatly denied putting nuclear weapons back into the Kaliningrad region. Russia has a strong military presence in Kaliningrad -- sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania along the Baltic Sea coast -- and any deployment of nuclear arms there would be a serious cause for concern, the Polish defense minister said on Friday. A U.S. Pentagon official confirmed late Wednesday that Russia is believed to have moved short-range nuclear-capable weapons into the enclave and said it was part of a "disturbing trend" that raises questions about Moscow's commitment to pledges it has made on arms control. The Polish daily Rzeczpospolita reported Friday the Polish government has obtained from NATO satellite photos confirming the deployment of missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The paper quoted a high-level NATO source as saying that "satellite photos have confirmed the deployment last June of new missiles in Kaliningrad, but we cannot be 100 percent certain they contain nuclear warheads."