Kania pledges deals will be honoured

Press, 6 October 1980, Page 6

Kania pledges deals will be honoured

NZPA-Reuter Warsaw! Stanislaw Kania. Poland’s! new Communist Party chief.’ has strongly attacked the' administration of his prede-j cessor and promised that’ Government agreements; with the Soviet bloc’s first independent trades unions will be honoured. Mr Kania told a party central committee meeting, which continued yesterday, that the labour revolt in the l summer “was a mass-scale workers' protest not against socialism but against the violation of its principles.” “It was not. against the i party hut against the errors' ■of its policy.” said Mr' i Kania, who replaced Edward

iGierek during a September! ; 5-6 committee meeting after i the accords ending the ! strikes were ' signed on August 31. But Mr Kania wondered at J the necessity of the one■hour warning strike om Friday by members of the: new ' unions to protest against the alleged failure of. the Government to honour! pay and access-to-media promises. Hundreds of thou-l sands of workers around the! country joined the strike. j “The country’s situation is known to every-j body. Strikes not onlyj .:weaken it but simply ruin' the country. What is the

•;workers’ interest in it? he ■ asked. : Six Soviet Navy ships visi ited Gdansk Bay on Friday as the first independent ; labour unions in the Com- ■ munist bloc were holding a Jone-hour strike, dissident n sources have said. Sources close to the Solidarity labour movement in ! Gdansk said the fleet, con- ! sisting of two cutters, a t’ri.l gate, a cruiser, a surveilI lance' ship and a troop car'l'rier, had left by Saturday I evening. I A spokesman for the dissident Self-Defence Committee (K.0.R.) said they regarded the visit as “a show ■'of strength" but said they ■iwere not taking it seriously.