General pleads for U.S. to lift sanctions

Press, 19 August 1983, Page 6

General pleads for U.S. to lift sanctions

NZPA Warsaw As fi nation-wide wave of strikes looked increasingly likely, the Polish Prime Minister, General Wojciech Jaruzelski pleaded with a delegation of American congressmen yesterday to lift the American economic sanctions.

In an escalation of protest against the Communist regime’s failure to respect the Gdansk civil rights agreements, the underground head of the outlawed Solidarity trade .union urged workers throughout Poland to follow the lead of the clandestine Solidarity branch at the Lenin Shipyard at Gdansk.

That branch has threatened strikes and go-slow work from August 23 if the Government has not consented by then to open talks oh unobserved points of the Gdansk agreements. Their third anniversary will be on August 31. General Jaruzelski talked to a delegation from the American House of Representatives led by a Maryland Ifemocrat, Clarence Long. Tne general argued in

favour of a lifting of American trade sanctions against Poland.

“Only a halt to these hostile policies can lead to an improvement and normalisation of relations between the two countries,” said Pap, the Polish news agency.

Mr Long said shortly after his arrival that he also was concerned with Poland’s SUS2S billion foreign debt, as well as “with the liberty of ;f |he Polish people.”

The Polish Government had hoped that Washington would lift the sanctions when martial law was formally ended on July 22. The sanctions had cost Poland ?USI3 billion . last year and would cost another SUS 7 billion this year, said the Communist Party newspaper, “Trybuna Ludu.” Meanwhile Zbigniew Bujak, the main leader of Solidarity’s clandestine national co-ordinating committee, appealed to “all unionists and Solidarity organisations to actively support the strikes at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk.” Mr Bujak recalled in a committee news bulletin that the Lenin Shipyard had been the birthplace of Solidarity. He said that the yard should be a “lighthouse for all” during August

The East German head of State, Erich Honecker, was leaving Poland today at the end of a three-day visit during which he endorsed the Polish leadership’s attempts to steer the country out of its political and economic crisis.