Polish P.M. resigns as political disorder mounts

Press, 11 February 1981, Page 8

Polish P.M. resigns as political disorder mounts

NZPA-Reuter Warsaw A Soviet-trained Polish Army general has been nominated to become Poland’s fourth Prime Minister inside a year following the resignation of Josef Pinkowski, harried out of office by months of labour strife. Mr Pinkowski, who is 51, resigned yesterday during a crisis meeting of the ruling Communist Party’s Central Committee which had convened to draw up a political offensive to cope with mounting political and economic chaos. The committee announced it would recommend'Parliament to appoint as the new Prime Minister. General Wojciech Jaruzelski, , who has been Defence Minister since 1968. The committee session was dominated by sharp attacks against the Solidarity free trade-union movement and its dissident allies, portending but not spelling out a new tough line.

As the j4O-member committee met, Solidarity

brought another southern Polish province — Jelenia Gora — to ;c standstill, staged brief stoppages in several cities and threatened further widespread strike, action. Student strikes also spread. General Jaruzelski,' who joined the Soviet-formed Polish Army in 1943, is regarded as a moderate. He was reported to have opposed the use of force to deal with last summer’s national strikes which led to the creation of the Eastern bloc’s first free trade-union movement. But as Prime Minister he faces threats of strikes from the 10-million strong Solidarity union even on his first day in office if the Supreme Court decides today against the legalisation of independent unions for Poland’s farmers. " The authorities made it clear yesterday that they were not prepared to compromise on the issue of fanners’ unions. "The Politburo is of the

opinion that there are no grounds for consent to the establishment of such organisations,” the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Kazimierz Barcikowski) told the Central Committee.' Mr Barcikowski accused Solidarity of deliberately promoting tension by staging overly political strikes, which he said went far beyond the legality of its statutes. A fellow Politburo member, Tadeusz Grabski, accused extremists in the union of promoting anarchy and counter-revolution. Prime Minister Pinkowski, who took office last August at the height of the summer unrest, fell only days after his Government caved in on what authorities regarded as a. political dispute. ~r" He had initially attempted to side-step demands by Solidarity leaders in the southern province of Bielsko-Biala for the dismissal of local-government officials. Solidarity mounted an 11-

day strike in the province to force the dismissals. The Prime Minister, after stating that he needed a month to consider personnel changes, suddenly accepted the resignations of top local officials. No sooner had the dispute in Bielsko-Biala been settled than workers in Jelenia Gora began a strike to force the police into handing over a sanatorium, which is still under construction, ‘to the local hospital. Solidarity officials held talks in Warsaw yesterday on the dispute, where there were no indications from either the Government or the union o: any imminent breakthrough. Brief strikes were reported yesterday in Lublin and Wroclaw and students at Warsaw’s medical school and at Poznan University began sit-ins to back a strike by 10,000 university students who are demanding fewer compulsory lectures on Marxism, a reduction of military service, and the release of political prisoners.