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Komorowski: pullout from Afghanistan in 2012

22 June 2010 20:01 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Poland’s interim president said Tuesday he will end his country’s military mission in Afghanistan in 2012, if he wins next month’s runoff election, APA reports quoting news.yahoo.com website.
Bronislaw Komorowski said he would start scaling back Poland’s force of some 2,600 troops in Afghanistan in 2011, and end the mission the following year. He said his plan would echo that of the Obama administration, which wants to start bringing U.S. troops home in July 2011.
Komorowski, 58, 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.
Parliament Speaker Komorowski assumed presidential duties after the crash.
Hours after returning from a visit to Afghanistan, he said the time was ripe to seek political rather than military solutions there. Poland will press for turning the Afghan mission into a more civilian one at an autumn NATO summit.
Komorowski has previously said he favors ending Poland’s military involvement but hadn’t talked about a timeline.
Also Tuesday, Komorowski’s campaign chief, Slawomir Nowak, said two televised policy debates are planned between the two presidential candidates, one of them on Sunday.