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The United States will deploy Patriot-type surface-to-air missiles in northern Poland some 60 kilometres (35 miles) from Russia's Kaliningrad territory, Poland's defence minister said Wednesday. "Morag was chosen as the location long ago, but we didn't make it public," Bogdan Klich said, quoted by Poland's PAP news agency.
He insisted the choice of the site close to Kaliningrad had "no political or strategic meaning -- its good infrastructure is the only reason."
Home to a Polish military base, Morag could see the Patriot missiles arrive as soon as late March or early April, Klich said.
On December 11, Poland and the United States signed a prerequisite agreement on the status of US troops in the ex-communist eastern European NATO and EU member ahead of the planned Patriot deployment.
During an October 2009 visit to Warsaw by US Vice President Joe Biden, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said his country was ready to join a new US anti-missile system in central Europe.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said the United States wants to deploy SM-3-type missiles in Poland and the neighbouring Czech Republic in 2015.
Gates's announcement came after President Barack Obama in September scrapped a plan agreed in 2008 to install a controversial anti-missile shield system in the two countries.
The system, promoted by Obama's predecessor George W. Bush, had enraged Russia which considered it a grave national security threat.
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