He hasn't been the president-elect for long, but Barack Obama is already facing his first foreign-policy contretemps. Within hours of the election, Russian leader Dmitri Medvedev threatened to deploy short-range missiles near Russia's border with Poland to "neutralize" an antimissile system that the Bush administration has long planned to install in Poland and the Czech Republic. A few days later, after Obama returned a congratulatory call from Polish President Lech Kaczynski, the Polish leader issued a statement claiming Obama had offered reassurances that he would proceed with the missile plan. But Obama's team disputed Kaczynski's account, saying in a statement that Obama had made "no commitment."
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