If Poland decides to withdraw its troops from Iraq it will appear to be surrendering to terrorists, Poland's largest opposition party, which tops the country's popularity polls, said on Monday. "To decide to stop participating in a war because there are casualties means, de facto, surrendering," Donald Tusk, head of the liberal Civic Platform party, told public radio a day after three Polish soldiers were killed in an attack south of Baghdad.
His comments came on the same day Iraq's interim President Ghazi Al-Yawar arrived in Warsaw for an official visit. "The idea is to withdraw the Polish troops from Iraq in agreement with other allies so as not to give the impression that the Poles are surrendering to terrorism as the Spaniards did" last spring, said Tusk, who is considered a potential presidential candidate for the elections set for the end of 2005. "On the other hand, we must pressure our allies, especially the Americans, so that they present a precise plan for ending the intervention in Iraq, and to learn what in the end was the object of this intervention," he added.
Three Polish soldiers were killed and three others injured when their patrol was attacked with rockets and machine guns near the central Iraqi city of Hilla on Sunday. With this last attack the number of Polish nationals killed since the country dispatched 2,500 troops to Iraq last year in the wake of the US-led war has risen to 17 -- 13 soldiers and four civilians. Poland heads up a multinational force of 6,000 soldiers in the war-torn country. According to the latest poll, more than 70 percent of Poles are opposed to the presence of their country's troops in Iraq. Parliamentary elections are also due next year in Poland, with a recent poll putting the PO in the lead with 25 percent support, with the ruling Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) party which committed Polish troops to Iraq receiving seven percent support. |