By Barbara Erling and Anna Koper
WARSAW (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump at the last minute requested MAGA-allied Polish President Karol Nawrocki be part of the Ukraine teleconference with European leaders on Wednesday, according to centrist Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Nawrocki’s bitter political rival who had been expected to attend.
Nawrocki, a conservative nationalist and eurosceptic, is an ally of Trump’s right-wing populist MAGA political motion and visited the White House during Poland’s presidential election marketing campaign this yr. He defeated the candidate of Tusk’s pro-European, centrist get together in June.
“Just before midnight yesterday we received information, alongside our European partners, that the American side would prefer that Poland was represented by the president in contacts with President Trump,” Tusk informed a information convention.
The White House did not remark whether the U.S. requested Nawrocki rather than Tusk take half in the call.
A Polish authorities spokesperson said on Tuesday that Tusk, a former head of the European Council of leaders, would attend the call with Trump.
But Nawrocki international coverage adviser Marcin Przydacz informed reporters he had “no information that Prime Minister Donald Tusk had previously planned to participate.”
He said Tusk’s group confirmed it did not have good contacts with the Trump administration because it was under the impression Tusk would take half.
Government spokesman Adam Szlapka said Tusk was representing Poland in two calls on Wednesday with European leaders but not Trump. Przydacz said the places of work of the president and prime minister would exchange data about the conferences.
European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy spoke to Trump forward of the U.S. president’s summit with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, stressing the need to shield Kyiv’s pursuits.
Krzysztof Izdebski, coverage director at the Batory Foundation, said having two political opponents characterize Poland created a risk of blended messages.
“This shows that, even in foreign policy, in such a key issue of security, we are simply hostage to internal politics and a certain competition between various state bodies,” he said.
He said this would undermine Poland’s effort to current itself as a trendy nation working with main nations on worldwide political points.
Nawrocki and PiS are robust supporters of Ukraine in its warfare with invading Russian forces, as is Tusk and his authorities, but they differ on points such as abortion, household values and the rule of law.
Tusk said that he revered the U.S. request to keep contacts at the presidential stage, but this should not be used to “play Poles against each other”.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Barbara Erling, Anna Koper, Marek Strzelecki; Editing by Gareth Jones, Alex Richardson and Cynthia Osterman)
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