US Vice President Joe Biden will visit the Czech Republic and Poland later this month following a political furor over the US decision to shelve plans for a missile defense system, hosted by the two countries.
Biden will also visit Romania during the October 20-24 visit to Europe, the White House said.
The White House denied that Biden was being sent to eastern Europe on a damage control mission following the missile defense decision last month, and downplayed anger in Warsaw and Prague at the administration's move.
"The vice president is somebody who has long relationships throughout Europe," said President Barack Obama's top spokesman Robert Gibbs.
"They're important allies of ours. He'll continue those relationships and meet with them on his upcoming trip."
Gibbs did not doubt however that the debate over missile defense would come up, but added that Biden and his hosts were "very comfortable" with the US decision.
Officially, Polish and Czech leaders insisted last month that ties with the United States remained solid, despite Obama's decision to cancel the system, which Washington said targeted future long-range missiles from Iran.
But their powerful Russian neighbor, which fiercely opposed the weapons, and saw them as an attempt to neutralize its own ballistic missile arsenal.
Commentaries by some political and press critics condemned Washington for having sold out the former eastern bloc countries to Moscow.
Obama announced in September that he would dispense with the Bush-era design for missile defense and instead commission a system targeting Iranian short-and-medium range missiles to be based at first on sea-borne interceptor missiles.
A report in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza said last month that the United States may still set up a permanent short- and medium-range missile base in Poland, as well as deploy mobile missile batteries.
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