Section: New York > Printer-Friendly Version
Schumer Is Criticized By Prague, Poles, Romanians
Op-Ed Is Called 'Hard to Believe'
By ROSS GOLDBERG, Special to the Sun
June 6, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/national/schumer-is-criticized-by-prague-poles-romanians/79466/
Senator Schumer is coming under sharp criticism from the government of the
Czech Republic and from Polish-American and Romanian-American leaders in
America after writing an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal suggesting
that America should accommodate what he called Prime Minister Putin's "dream
of eventually restoring Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe."
Diplomats and community leaders who read the Journal article in response to
inquiries by The New York Sun said they were taken aback by the suggestion
by the New York Democrat that America should try to gain Russia's backing
for tougher sanctions on Iran by abandoning NATO plans to build missile
defense sites in Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic.
RELATED: Obama's Schumer Problem.
The Czech ambassador to the United Nations, Martin Palous, objected to the
idea that his country should be "offered to Russia." "We don't think that
there should be a kind of bargaining chip with Russians, that Russians
should be given certain concessions to get some advantages," Mr. Palous
said. "We certainly would like to be considered a partner, not an object to
be negotiated about."
The president of the Polish American Congress division that includes New
York City, Frank Milewski, said Mr. Schumer "sounds like Churchill and
Roosevelt, who at the Yalta conference in 1945 were willing to consign
Eastern Europe to the Soviet sphere of influence and brought about the
eventual Cold War."
"It's hard to believe that someone would be making that kind of a
statement," Mr. Milewski said. Mr. Schumer's office did not respond to
requests for comment.
This isn't the first time that Mr. Schumer has peeved Americans of East
European origin. A source recalled a speech Mr. Schumer gave at the Polish
consulate about five years ago, in which he mistakenly said that Poland was
not yet a member of NATO. In fact, it had already joined the alliance in
1999.
The executive director of the Romanian-American Network and editor in chief
of the Chicago-based Romanian Tribune, Steven Bonica, grew up behind the
Iron Curtain in Romania and escaped to America as a political refugee in
1984. He recalled that the population felt betrayed after World War II when
America "abandoned" it to the Eastern Bloc. Mr. Bonica said it was special
moment when Romania hosted a NATO summit in April, nearly 20 years after the
country was freed from Soviet influence.
"Now, to go back?" he asked in response to Mr. Schumer. "Only someone who
does not respect democracy or people's will would suggest that Romania and
countries of eastern Europe should be left alone or pushed towards Russia."
A few community leaders took particular issue with the passage in the
senator's article in which he wrote that Mr. Putin "seeks to regain the
power and greatness Russia had before the fall of the Soviet Union."
"What does Schumer mean? That if we have communist Russia back, then it's
ok?" asked the editor in chief of the Polish American Journal, Mark Kohan.
"Schumer thinks they'll have power and leave us alone. That's ludicrous."
The editor of the Polish Daily News in Manhattan, Czeslaw Karkowski, said
that the antimissile site would ensure that America has a continuing
interest in protecting Poland. And the president of the American Friends of
the Czech Republic, Peter Rafaeli, said he believes that the shield may one
day avert an actual missile attack.
"If there's an ounce of possibility that it may protect these countries from
going through another devastation, then I think they deserve it," Mr.
Rafaeli said. He emphasized that he was not speaking for his organization,
which is apolitical. The head of the Long Island Chapter of the Polish
American Congress, Richard Brzozowski, said he agreed with Mr. Schumer that
the shield is more trouble than it's worth.
"The Polish people should not be subjected to having those sites there
because Russia is strongly against it and Russia and Poland have never been
on great terms," Mr. Brzozowski said.
Several of those interviewed questioned why Mr. Schumer felt the need to
write the proposal in the first place, especially one on such a sensitive
issue.
"I don't think there's another senator who has more to say on any given day
than Schumer," said the president of the Congress of Romanian Americans,
Armand Scala. "He's more political than he needs to be out there in the
media."
http://www.nysun. com/national/ schumer-is-
criticized- by-prague-
poles-romanians/ 79466/