Polish government appoints new “head” of US embassy as president refuses to name him ambassador
Poland’s government has named a new figure to head the Polish embassy in the United States. However, he will not formally be an ambassador because President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, has refused to sign off on his nomination.
“Senator Bogdan Klich will soon arrive in Washington and take over the management of the Polish embassy,” foreign minister Radosław Sikorski told broadcaster RMF.
“He probably won’t be an ambassador because the president announced that he won’t sign off [on nominations] for anyone, especially not for Senator Klich, but he will become the head of the mission,” added Sikorski.
Senator Bogdan Klich @BogdanKlich wkrótce przyjedzie do Waszyngtonu i obejmie kierownictwo nad Ambasadą RP @PolishEmbassyUS w stolicy USA – potwierdził @RMF24pl szef MSZ @sikorskiradek . Klich przybędzie do Waszyngtonu bez podpisu i wszystko na to wskazuje, bez formalnej… pic.twitter.com/swZHud4zCt
— Paweł Żuchowski (@p_zuchowski) July 13, 2024
Klich is a senator from Civic Platform (PO), Poland’s main ruling party. He previously served as defence minister from 2007 to 2011 in an earlier PO-led government.
Last month, Duda announced that, while he remains in office, he will not sign off on the government’s nomination for Klich to become ambassador. He noted that Klich was defence minister at the time of the Smolensk disaster, when a Polish military plane crashed in Russia, killing then-president Lech Kaczyński and 95 others.
“Radosław Sikorski and [Prime Minister] Donald Tusk want to send as Polish ambassador to the US, to the world’s largest military power, where the safety and health of the president is in a category unimaginable to Poles, a man who was defence minister when the president of Poland died in a plane crash in a military plane,” said Duda.
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“It will be one big joke,” added the president, speaking to TV Republika. “I will never agree to this, as long as I am the president for another fourteen months I will never sign this ambassadorial nomination. I will not sign it because I will not compromise Poland.”
However, speaking to RMF, Sikorski said that “if PiS has proof of Senator Klich’s participation in the Smolensk attack, he will not go to the US but to jail”.
PiS has long claimed that the former PO-led government was responsible for causing the Smolensk crash, or at least helped Russia cover up the true causes. However, despite spending eight years and tens of millions of zloty reinvestigating the crash, PiS has failed to offer proof supporting its claims of a conspiracy.
Poland’s new government has abolished the commission established by its predecessor to reinvestigate the Smolensk crash.
It says the body was responsible for spreading „lies”.
But the commission’s head, Antoni Macierewicz, says the move is illegal https://t.co/A04apsJ0fE
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) December 16, 2023
Polish ambassadors are nominated by the foreign ministry but formally appointed by the president. Duda’s current – and final – term in office lasts until the middle of next year.
For now, Klich will hold the title of chargé d’affaires at the embassy in Washington. However, in the absence of an ambassador, he will, in practice, head the mission. He will take over from Marek Magierowski, Duda’s former spokesman, who has served as ambassador in Washington since 2021.
Speaking last month, Duda also pledged not to approve the government’s nomination of Ryszard Schnepf – who served as ambassador to the US from 2012 to 2016 – as ambassador to Italy.
As justification, Duda noted that “Schnepf’s father, together with the Soviets, participated in the Augustów Roundup against Poles”, referring to a Soviet operation in 1945 to eliminate Polish anti-communist partisans. Schnepf’s father, Maksymilian, commanded a military unit that supported the operation.
A building that served as a Soviet headquarters – and in which prisoners were detained, tortured and executed – has been bought by the Polish government and will be turned into a museum commemorating communist crimes https://t.co/wKGxLowLS9
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) July 8, 2021
Earlier this month, the Gazeta Wyborcza daily reported that PiS had been putting pressure on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – whose Brothers of Italy party is allied to PiS in the European Parliament – not to accept Schnepf as ambassador.
Subsequently, Sikorski confirmed in an interview with broadcaster TVN that he had “looked into this rumour and unfortunately it is confirmed”.
In March, Duda criticised the government’s plans to replace over 50 ambassadors appointed under the former PiS administration. Recent weeks have also seen a dispute between him and the government over Poland’s ambassador to NATO, who Tusk this week claimed should not have received security clearance.
Prime minister @donaldtusk has claimed that Poland’s ambassador to NATO served until this year despite being suspected by the intelligence services of offences including improper handling of classified documents and contact with foreign security services https://t.co/kbgzL2TkK7
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) July 13, 2024
Main image credit: Slawomir Kaminski / Agencja Wyborcza.pl
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
