Polish Defense Ministry delegation is here

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ A Polish military delegation led by the Under-Secretary of State Robert Kupiecki is paying an official visit to our country November 12-14. On the first day of the visit, the delegation attended an opening ceremony of the Polish Film Days at the Institute of Radio and Television. The delegation is planning to meet with D.Bat-Erdene, the Defense Minister on Wednesday at the State Residence. Then the guests will visit the Defense Ministry to hold a ministerial consultative meeting. After this, high rank military medals of Poland will be bestowed upon Major-General Z.Boldbaatar, a Secretary of State in the Ministry of Defense, and other servicemen who have performed army duties in Iraq. Our country has been striving efforts to broaden its defense cooperation with Poland, who is a member of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and has firm military relations with USA. Mongolia and Poland established military relations in 1970s under the Warsaw Pact, and developed comprehensive cooperation that included exchanging military personnel, conducting joint exercises, involving Mongolian servicemen in Polish military schools. However, in 1991 the relations interrupted due to the Warsaw treaty organization’s shutdown. In July of 2003, defense leaders of the two countries met at the Ministerial Consultative Meeting in Warsaw, where Poland expressed a further support for Mongolia in taking part in the NATO program for Peace and Security, reviving the frozen relations in defense sector between Mongolia and Poland. Robert Kupiecki (46) began working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland in 1994. He was head of NATO and West European Union Section from 1994 to 1998, and the deputy ambassador of Poland to NATO in 1999-2004. Then he served as the director of the security policy department. In 2008-2012, he served as Poland's ambassador to the United States. On August 2012, he was appointed Deputy Minister of National Defense, replacing Zbigniew Wlosowicz. Kupiecki has received the Officer’s Cross of Merit of the Republic of Lithuania, the Gold and Silver Medal “For the Services for the Country’s Defense”, and the Silver Medal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovakia. He is also the author and co-author of several books.