Word: jaruzelski
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Walesa acted just hours after he achieved a breakthrough in his relations with the Communist regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski. He held three hours of talks in Warsaw with Interior Minister General Czeslaw Kiszczak, the first time senior Polish officials have granted Walesa a role in the nation's affairs since 1981, when they imposed martial law, suppressed Solidarity and put the union leader in detention. Kiszczak said if the strikes were halted, the regime would set up a round table for serious negotiations on the economy, presumably including workers' demands for better wages, housing and food stocks...
...government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski played on such popular fears by giving unprecedented television coverage to the strikes. Alluding to the demand for the legalization of Solidarity, Government Spokesman Jerzy Urban ruled out "gunpoint negotiations with strikers on political issues." A curfew was called in the heart of the mining-strike region near Katowice, and others were authorized for the port cities of Szczecin and Gdansk. After declaring the strikes illegal, authorities accelerated trials, and jail sentences of up to three months were imposed on charged strikers...
...Jaruzelski seemed to signal a shift in mood late last week at a special meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee, when he called for a "brave new turn" and the "courage to break stereotypes" in dealing with worker grievances. Jaruzelski's remarks followed a television address by General Czeslaw Kiszczak, the Interior Minister, who offered to open talks with representatives of "different social groups" to end the unrest. While there was speculation that the Kiszczak statement hinted at possible talks with Solidarity for the first time since 1981, the offer was greeted with skepticism by Poles, who have heard...
...have shown more than that. Over the past month, the church, through Poland's Jozef Cardinal Glemp, has conducted a series of informal meetings aimed at forging political cooperation between the Jaruzelski regime and moderates outside the government, including some with ties to the outlawed Solidarity labor movement. So far, the negotiations have foundered over the government's refusal to grant fresh recognition to Solidarity, which emerged as a potent challenger to Communist rule during the union's brief heyday in 1980-81. Gorbachev's unusual stopover at a functioning church appeared to provide a subtle endorsement of the bargaining...
Gorbachev went out of his way to bolster the stature of his host, who was widely rumored in Poland to be out of the Soviet leader's favor. "I regard Comrade Jaruzelski as my great friend," he said at one point. "I will tell you Poles directly you are very lucky to have such a man at this complicated stage of Polish history...