Tough Call on Poland

President Reagan must decide whether to relax economic sanctions against Poland, despite Warsaw’s behavior, or keep the heat on. He suggested recently, after meeting with an official of the outlawed trade union, Solidarity, that relations between the countries could improve if the Polish government released political prisoners and renewed the dialogue with its critics. There is no guarantee that Poland’s Communist rulers will let anybody out of jail, and they are not about to make concessions to Solidarity. That makes it a tough call for Reagan, but it’s made easier by the fact that the Roman Catholic Church and Solidarity founder Lech Walesa themselves have called at times for an end to the sanctions.

The Warsaw government, beset by economic problems and serious labor unrest, recognized Solidarity as an independent trade union in 1980. Then, obsessed with fears that Solidarity’s liberalizing influence threatened the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power, it imposed martial law in December, 1981, and went on to outlaw the union and pursue a policy of repression.

The sanctions imposed by the Reagan Administration in response were relaxed a bit when Warsaw formally lifted martial law and granted amnesty to political prisoners. Since then, however, more pro-Solidarity activists have been imprisoned and the government has flatly refused to reopen the dialogue with Walesa or other leaders of the movement; relations with the Catholic Church remain strained.

Polish workers are not so willing these days to stick their necks out with overt strikes or demonstrations. But as much as the Communist rulers try to pretend otherwise, this doesn’t signify a disintegration of support for Solidarity’s democratic ideals or an increase in support for the government. There is a thriving underground and a substantial number of Poles are estranged from the government. As L’Unita, organ of the independent-minded Italian Communist Party, observed a few weeks ago, Solidarity’s influence is still “present in every corner of Poland . . . its roots are deep and it expresses needs that are truly vital and cannot be suppressed.”

That came across in the elections this month to the Polish Parliament. Communist governments always count on a turnout of more than 99% in their rigged elections; by its own admission the Warsaw regime turned out only 79% of the electorate. Solidarity claims even that figure represents a 15% exaggeration.

The regime’s neurotic insecurity is reflected in its threat to put Walesa on trial for daring to challenge the official election figures.

Premier Wojciech Jaruzelski, in short, has given Washington precious little reason to relax the restraints on U.S. trade and credits. As the Reagan Administration has quietly recognized, there is nonetheless a case for doing so.

To begin with, sanctions that damage Poland’s economy by definition strike at the economic well-being of the Polish people, too. Most Poles have seemed willing to accept the sacrifices, but over time the Communists are bound to make headway with their claim that the U.S. sanctions, not Marxist mismanagement, are to blame for the country’s economic problems. Similar considerations have led Walesa and Cardinal Jozef Glemp to call for relaxation of the remaining sanctions.

Beyond that, to the degree that the denial of credits and favorable trade relations is effective, it forces Poland to accept a greater degree of economic interdependence with the Soviet Union--thereby giving Moscow even more leverage over the Communist government in Warsaw.

The United States has already withdrawn its veto of Polish membership in the International Monetary Fund--itself a major concession. The Reagan Administration’s efforts to extract some concessions before further dismantling the bilateral restraints on credits and trade are appropriate. But the fact is that a certain American reengagement in Poland might give us more leverage in behalf of Polish independence, rather than less.