Word: walesa
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Meeting in Gdansk under Lech Walesa's leadership, Solidarity's national commission said it had no intention of calling any strikes in the next two months, but warned, "No resolution of the parliament will prevent a strike if the security of our union is threatened or a glaring violation of the law occurs...
...exit in what they call "the bodywatch" ?the need to record any presidential calamity, or what Reagan has termed "the awful-awful." Other reporters were there, some with microphones and tape recorders, to ask the President for his reaction to the latest showdown between the government and Lech Walesa's independent labor movement in Poland. As always, curious onlookers pressed in for a glimpse of the President. They included some union members who had either arrived late for the lunch or left it early to get a closer view of Reagan. There were women with Kodaks, children, and even...
...breakthrough came at a seven-hour meeting between Deputy Premier Mieczyslaw Rakowski and Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa on the eve of the threatened strike. There was little optimism when those talks got under way at noon in Warsaw's 17th century Koniecpolski Palace. Three previous meetings had failed to defuse the crisis that erupted last month when police in the northwestern city of Bydgoszcz brutally evicted 26 union members from a provincial assembly hall. Indeed, a massive warning strike to protest the beatings had halted the country for four hours on March 27. With Solidarity brandishing a list...
Rakowski pulled no punches. He opened the talks by telling Walesa bluntly that the government would declare a state of emergency and possibly call in the army if the general strike took place. As Solidarity Spokesman Janusz Onyszkiewicz later recounted, the government side threatened a "total confrontation including some bloodshed. This time it looked like it was not a bluff." With that grim threat waving over them, the Solidarity delegates dropped their unyielding stance and began working toward a compromise agreement. They were apparently also prompted by some behind-the-scenes mediation from Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, the Primate of Poland...
Less than one hour before that limit, Walesa emerged from the building to announce that an agreement had been reached and the strike was being canceled. Cheers erupted from the crowd of several thousand workers and housewives assembled before the wrought-iron gates. They chanted Walesa's nickname, "Leszek, Leszek." As Walesa's car inched through the crush of supporters, some overexuberant fans even managed to lift the rear wheels off the ground. A sticker on Walesa's windshield seemed to capture the spirit of the moment: IT'S EXCITING TO BE POLISH...