




Under Article 5 of the NATO pact, an attack on one member state is treated as an attack on all. Despite that assurance, Polish officials still see the country's NATO status as second-class and seek further security guarantees.





Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said he had received assurances from Washington that Poland would still get the Patriot missiles, a legal requirement under the 2008 deal, and that it would play a role in the revised missile-defense system.

U.S. and Polish officials had hoped to begin rotating American Patriot batteries based in Europe into Poland for month-long tours by the end of this year, but the slow pace of negotiations is likely to put off the first deployment until next year.

The U.S. missile shield has become a contentious issue in domestic Polish politics. The ousted conservatives accuse the current government of contributing to Washington's U-turn by delaying the signature and then ratification of the deal. The left-wing Democratic Left Alliance, or SLD, welcomed the shift.

"We know very well that if the project was executed, Poland would become a target for all the countries that would like to attack the U.S.," said SLD leader Grzegorz Napieralski. "This is a great failure of the entire right-wing camp."

The SLD, however, has been sidelined in Polish politics. A majority of Poles supported the U.S. missile-defense shield, according to the most recent opinion poll, published last month.

—Peter Spiegel contributed to this article.

Write to Marc Champion at marc.champion@wsj.com