Press Releases 2003

Press Conference with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Myers and Chief of General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces General Czesław Piątas

19 September 2003

MODERATOR: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I would like to welcome everybody to the beginning of the official visit of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers to Poland. A moment ago the staff talks ended. We are going to begin the press conference; so joining us are General Myers, General Piątas, Chief of General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, as well as Press Officer Captain Frank Thorp. The press conference will begin with short statements from both generals and then we will have a Q-and-A session.

General Piątas: I want to say that I am very happy that General Myers is visiting Poland. This visit is very short, but it is very fruitful. It is very good. A moment ago we finished the staff talks. We raised subjects connected with international security, the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Polish-American bilateral cooperation. We certainly focused for quite a long time on our joint mission in Iraq and also on joint implementation of the tasks by our troops in Iraq. We stressed cooperation between the Polish and American armed forces. This cooperation is really very good and the future also seems to be very good. And we will do everything possible to deepen this cooperation and use the opportunities that are ahead of us. I wish the General a very good visit and I also wish him very good weather. The weather is really very nice today, especially if we consider the fact that there is now a hurricane in Washington, and water is pouring from the sky there.

General Myers: Thank you for your kind words and for your comments on the weather, General Piątas. This has been a great stay so far in Poland. We thank you for the hospitality, and although the time will be short, it has already been very productive. Later this morning we will meet the minister of defense, the national security advisor, and also it will be my honor to go the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. As I think most of you know, U.S. and Poland military ties are exceptionally strong. Poland is indeed a valued ally. We are very grateful for Poland’s contributions to operation “Enduring Freedom,” operation “Iraqi Freedom” and the many other places around the world where Polish armed forces serve to make this world a more peaceful place. Polish leadership of the multi-national division that is in Iraq now is a great asset, not only for the Coalition forces there, but for the Iraqi people. And I can tell you that the United States is very grateful for the support and Poland’s leadership in this effort. In particular, we are very appreciative of the dynamic leadership of General Tyszkiewicz in demonstrating and exercising his command of this multi-national division. One of the things I’d like do publicly is to thank the Polish General Staff for their excellent planning and execution of what is a very challenging and difficult mission. Of course, our military relationship goes well beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. We have a wide range of issues and programs that involve all branches of our armed forces. Right now as we stand and sit here, American and Polish soldiers stand soldier-to-soldier in Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan and in the Persian Gulf, keeping the peace and carrying an offensive part of our war on terrorism. Wherever Polish armed forces serve, they garner a high degree of respect from the U.S. armed forces. We are also very pleased with Poland’s plans for defense reforms and modernization, and we will endeavor to support Poland in this key task even with the Polish deployment to Iraq. Let me just end by echoing General Piątas’ remarks that we have a very close bilateral relationship that benefits both countries, and we are appreciative of that fact.

MODERATOR: Let’s proceed to the Q-and-A session.

REPORTER: I have two questions. The first question is to both generals. Were there any other topics, apart from the Iraqi issue that you discussed today? And the second question is for directly General Myers. Given the huge amount of time and effort that was spent by the U.S. military and U.S. establishment in [inaudible] addressing new threats, in particular, what is often referred to as asymmetric warfare. Would you recommend to the Polish general staff -- Polish military -- any particular action, any particular field Poland should address in this respect?

PIĄTAS: Since I have only one question addressed to me, I will answer this question and give more time to my colleague, General Myers. Yes, we talked about our joint operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we also talked about the issues that you raised in your second question, which is connected to threats. A lot of time was spent on the issues connected with transformation, the new approach to the construction of military units connected with the new challenges. So we were talking about how to understand new threats and how to understand new risks and new challenges: where we should focus, first of all in the area of research and development; how to equip military units with the best military equipment; how to train these units; how to make them active to have better prepared systems and troops and all the soldiers. We also talked about the issue of a NATO response force, and we talked about building the core of professional NCOs in Poland. I also want to tell you that our NCOs are now going through training in different parts of the world, and they are also going to transfer the experience they will get from the United States into Poland. I also would like to tell you that it is impossible to focus on all these issues in great detail in an hour and a half. I would like to stress that we have reached full understanding with regard to the issues I have just mentioned, as well as the direction of our future cooperation, which is going to be closer and closer. All of this is going to be done to make sure that our soldiers, our troops will be used faster, more effectively, and -- above all -- more safely in all operations to make the world a better and a safer place.

MYERS: As to the second part of the question, I think a lot of that was answered by General Piątas, but let me just give you my perspective. Clearly, both Poland and the United States recognize that the security environment in the 21st century is much different than the environment that we had in the 20th century. And we did spend some time talking about the threats, that we see to security in the future, and that was a very good presentation. Out of that comes the maxim: if you think the environment has changed, what are you going to do about that? All you have to do is to look at the defense reforms being made by Poland in this regard. They address head-on these new security environments we find ourselves in. And it does not matter whether it is the ground forces, air forces or the naval forces; they are focused on the new threats in a way that is not without pain. There is a lot of change required here. Polish armed forces and the Polish government have made the very tough decision to posture themselves the best they can in this new security environment to protect the people of Poland. It is also reflected as General Piątas said, in how NATO is addressing this security environment. One of the ways is through the NATO response force -- a quicker capability to react to crises somewhere in the region, to react properly to this new asymmetric threat. And both the United States and Poland – for that matter – most countries of NATO are very enthusiastic about this new capability, because it exactly answers your question: how do you address these asymmetric threats? We will have a discussion on this next month when General Joe Bastiani from the United States Joint Forces Command will visit here. He also has a NATO hat. We will be discussing many of these issues. This has to be a continuing dialogue as we continue to evaluate how we can respond to this new threat that we face.

REPORTER: A moment ago we heard the information that the former Iraqi defense minister was captured in the area of Mosul. Do you have any further details about this operation? And a follow-up question: Are you convinced that catching individual members of the former Iraqi regime translates somehow into the situation in Iraq, because the resistance has not died away?

PIĄTAS: I do not know any details about the capture of the former defense minister of Iraq, but I will try to get as much information as possible. We expected something like that would happen, because the operation is ongoing. Responding to the second part of your question, on whether it influences the resistance in Iraq, I have to say that it does influence the resistance, but of course we will not see the results of such actions overnight. We have to realize that the second phase of the operation is only beginning, and it will take some time before we catch the leaders of the former regime. It is very important that Polish troops and the Polish GROM unit are also participating in it.

MYERS: I don’t have any specific information on this particular individual. We don’t have this information yet.

You may be ahead of us. In the former regime leadership there were 55 high-ranking individuals that we wanted to get as soon as we could, and today we have got 42 of them, out of 55 highest-ranking former regime leadership individuals. We will continue this. There are over 230 that we would really like to have to be able to interrogate and so forth. Out of these 230 we have over a hundred. And we continue to pick up these individuals every week. Clearly, if you pick up these individuals, it is helpful to the security situation in a couple of ways: one, is they can provide correct intelligence; two, just by the fact that former regime officials are no longer among society, those that feared the Baathist party and the former regime leadership, feel more compelled to come forward. They can tell you good intelligence, where other members are or where the weapons of mass destruction are.

After Saddam’s two sons were killed, we had a dramatic increase in Iraqis coming forward with good intelligence about where other people were, where weapons caches were, and so forth. And it stayed at a very high level once those two were killed.

I don’t want to take too much more time on this question, but part of your question said – if I understood it – that catching these individuals does not seem to be helpful to the security situation. First of all, as I just have described, it is certainly helping the security situation. We have to be very careful in Iraq when we talk about the security situation: It is very different in the north and the south, where it is relatively secure. By far the majority of incidents where our coalition forces are wounded or killed are in the area between Baghdad and Tikrit, Saddam’s home community. But incidents have not gone up over time. They went up between May and June and they stayed about the same level over time -- some of them showing great desperation, as in the bombing of the U.N. headquarters and the bombing of the individual, one of the holy sites. Thank you.

MODERATOR: Last question, please.

REPORTER: Could you please provide us your assessment of the Polish-led multinational divisions in Iraq? Can you give more details about the tasks that this division has to undertake? And the second question: When will Polish troops take over Najaf?

MYERS: Before I left on this trip Monday morning, we had a video teleconference with General Abass who was in Tikrit at that time. The General gave us a rundown of the security situation inside Iraq and specifically commented on the Polish-led multinational division. He said that the Polish division was settling in very quickly, was very quickly up-to-speed in terms of ability to carry on their tasks and, in fact, it already responded to several incidents and was performing superbly. We should not minimize the degree of challenge that is faced by the leadership in that Polish-led multinational division. Twenty-three different nations make up that division. It is good that almost 60 percent of them are from NATO, because they are familiar with NATO standards. This leaves a little more than 40 percent that are not NATO trained and used to NATO standards. So the leadership skill of the Polish officers and NCOs who lead that effort is to be commended. I know of no major problems with deployment of the Polish-led multinational division. I am sure there are going to be issues that will come up from time to time. The United States will work very closely with Poland and others to ensure that they have all the support they need to carry on their mission. As far as I know, from my colleagues who already operated in the Najaf area, we still have some forces there, but … you know, we call it leftsy-rightsy [inaudible] in the U.S. parlance just to make sure that the people who are coming into the area understand where the various people are and the priorities. Once again, having an international community involved in securing a peaceful Iraq is a really important task. It is important for all of us because of this threat of international terrorism, of extremism. And the fact that Poland has stepped forward and taken the leadership, taken on a very difficult challenge, and executed it so well up to this point is a real tribute to the leadership and this government.

The United States appreciates our close relationship and our close partnership, and we look forward to making it even closer and better in the future.

MODERATOR: Thank you very much.