Debate on Poles ends in disarray

Press, 4 February 1982, Page 6

Debate on Poles ends in disarray

NZPA-Reuter Geneva A session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva broke up in disarray yesterday after heated exchanges over Poland. The Bulgarian chairman suspended the meeting after appealing for-.an end to what he called “this unseemly clamour.” ' Western delegates said there had been huge violations of human rights in Poland since the imposition of martial law, but a Soviet representative. Valerian Zorin, objected to any discussion of "the non-existent situation in Poland.”

The Canadian and Danish delegates were repeatedly interrupted when they tried to make statements mentioning Poland. A Canadian delegate, Yvon Beaulne, told the meeting over protests from Poland, the Soviet Union, Byelorussia, and Cuba that 10 Western countries intended to raise the issue of what he called “repression” in Poland.

Mr Beaulne, who said ,he was also speaking for Australia, Denmark, West Germany, France, Italy, Japan,. The Netherlands, Britain and the United States, said the Polish situation would be raised under an item on violation of human rights due to be taken up in the fourth week of the six-week session.

He said a “state of siege” had been enforced in Poland seven weeks ago “and there is no glimpse of an end.”

The chairman, Ivan Garvalov. repeatedly stopped him speaking as the other delegates rose on points of order.

A Polish delegate, Adam Lopatka, protested against what he called interference in his country’s internal affairs.

At a United Nations Disarm - ament Committee session in Geneva, delegates from Belgium, France, The Netherlands, and Sweden attacked martial law in Poland as a threat to international security. They said it had jeopardised progress in United States-Soviet arms reduction talks and other attempts at weapons reductions.

Their criticism was ignored by the Soviet delegate, who said a Western military build-up was the sole cause of what all speakers agreed was a recent worsening in East-West relations.

In Washington the American Secretary of State (Mr Alexander Haig) again called yesterday for Western pressure to end the crisis.

Mr Haig told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that allied sanctions against Warsaw and Moscow were necessary to halt “their march toward the abyss in Poland.” “If we do not take serious actions commensurate with our concern, then the Soviets might be encouraged to test our resolve at other critical points in the world,” he said. He asserted that Western unity in opposition to the

military crackdown in Polandcame as an “unpleasant surprise” to the Soviet Union, whom he acbused of “complicity in the Polish crisis.”

■ But Poland’s Deputy Finance Minister (Mr Antoni Karas) said in Warsaw that economic restrictions imposed by the West were aggravating his country’s difficulties. He said American sanctions would hurt poultry breeding in Poland and deprive the country of 100,000 tonnes of fish normally caught in American waters.

In Moscow the chief of Warsaw’s militia was quoted yesterday as saying that opponents of the military Government were regrouping and learning to operate clandestinely. “The enemy has not surrendered. He still makes himself felt," Major-General Jerzy Cwek told the Soviet weekly, “Literraturnaya Gazeta."

A Polish newspaper yesterday quoted the country’s Justice Minister (Mr Sylwester Zawadski) as saying that the number of Poles interned for alleged infractions of martial law totalled 4177 as of January 29.

He said that 298 women were among the detained. By January 29 1300 people had been released.

The Prime Minister (General Wojciech Jaruzelski) told Parliament on January 25 that 1760 people had been freed, and that 4549 were still interned.