Obama: ‘Poland can be a world leader’

US President Barack Obama meets with PM Donald Tusk in Warsaw. Photo: PAP/Radek Pietruszka

The interview, which took place on Saturday morning, was the only meeting with media during Obama’s visit to Poland, with speculation that it could have been the only interview given during the American President’s trip to Europe.

Barack Obama praises Polish-American cooperation, denouncing critics’ analysis that relations between the two countries had been faltering since the beginning of his term.
“Our cooperation in terms of security has never been so good,” Obama told Igor Janke, a journalist from the centre-right Rzeczpospolita daily and founder of the salon24.pl website.

“Poland remains one of [the USA’s] key allies,” President Obama said, adding that “the rise of Poland’s importance in Europe, symbolised by Poland’s EU Council presidency, means that our cooperation will be even stronger in the future.”

Asked on how he would try and unite the divided political and social classes after the Smolensk catastrophe in which President Lech Kaczynski died last year, President Obama mused that “Poles should look back and realise how far [they] have come in such a short time.”

“Poles should feel proud and understand that if they are united and continue to develop for the next 25 years [like the country has done since 1989], then Poland will be a leader not only in Europe, but globally,” Obama spoke out on a positive note.

“It was enlightening to see how other countries look at Poland as an example of successful reforms,” commented Obama on his presence at the Meeting of Presidents of Central European States, at which he was a guest on Friday evening.

President Barack Obama touched down in Warsaw on Friday afternoon and spent two days in the Polish capital, meeting with President Bronislaw Komorowski, Prime Minister Donald Tusk as well as other the heads of Poland’s political parties. President Obama left for the USA on Saturday. (jb)