Leading candidate for president wants Poland’s troops out of Afghanistan in 2012
By APTuesday, June 22, 2010
Komorowski: pullout from Afghanistan in 2012
WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s interim president says he will end Poland’s military mission in Afghanistan in 2012 if he wins a runoff election.
Bronislaw Komorowski said Tuesday he will start scaling back Poland’s force of some 2,600 troops in Afghanistan in 2011 and end the mission the following year.
Komorowski narrowly won the first round of voting on Sunday but fell short of an outright majority. He will face a runoff on July 4 against Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of former President Lech Kaczynski, who died in a plane crash in April.
Komorowski says that Poland will press for turning the Afghan mission into a more civilian one at an autumn NATO summit.
He has previously said he favors ending Poland’s military involvement but hadn’t talked about a timeline.
