Soviet walk-out on Solidarity

Press, 16 June 1982, Page 9

Soviet walk-out on Solidarity

NZPA-Reuter Geneva All Soviet bloc worker delegates walked out of an International Labour Organisation meeting in Geneva yesterday when a representative of the suspended Polish trade union Solidarity took the floor; a Solidarity, spokesman has said. Jerzy Milewski, head of a Brussels-based co-ordinating bureau . for Solidarity members abroad, said the Soviet bloc delegates were joined by representatives from Angola and Mozambique. The delegates first tried to drown out the speech by Bogdap. Cywinski, a former vice-director of the Solidarity weekly newspaper. But most other delegates at the closed meeting applauded,' allowing him to read his statement to the workers in Geneva for- the 1.L.0. annual conference, Mr Cywinski later told journalists.

The Polish journalist showed a ragged piece of paper signed by the interned Solidarity leader; Lech Walesa, smuggled out of Poland, giving him the mandate to lead a team of seven

union officials living abroad to the 1.L.0. conference. In his speech, Mr Cywinski thanked Western trade unions for their support for Solidarity and hit out at martial law imposed in ■Poland six months go. “What' are the signatures under the 1.L.0. conventions or the Helsinki agreement ivorth, when in Poland one can be sentenced to IQ years imprisonment for the continuation of trade union activities, when one can lose one’s job because one wears a. Solidarity badge on one’s overalls?” he askecj. “Half a year of martial law has proven that nothing in the country has changed for the better. The economy is not functioning, poverty is growing.” Mr Cywinski, one of the .main Catholic advisers to Mr Walesa during the Gdansk negotiations in August, 1980, said the union still existed and has continually called for talks with the Government but in vain. “The alternative is growing conflict,” he said. “The limits of society’s endurance can be broken one day.