Bush Offers Poles a Break on Debts : No Progress Noted in Talks on Reforms With Gen. Jaruzelski

Vice President George Bush and Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski met for more than two hours in a 17th-Century palace outside this Communist capital Sunday, but the two apparently made scant progress in resolving their differences over the state of reforms in Polish society.

The vice president, in the second day of a four-day trip to Poland, offered something of a concession to the Polish leadership that will ease its negotiations with the so-called Paris Club of international lenders.

But U.S. spokesmen said that Bush emphasized to Jaruzelski the American view that strengthened economic ties with Poland are dependent on U.S. confidence that the Polish government is committed to systematic economic reform, a wider dialogue in society and guarantees of human rights.

Fresh Credit Needed

Gen. Jaruzelski, his government beset with increasingly difficult economic woes, pressed the point in the meeting with Bush that his planned “restructuring” of the Polish system depends on fresh infusions of credit, which have mostly dried up in the years since 1981, when martial law was declared and the independent trade union Solidarity was on its way to being outlawed.

The vice president is the highest ranking American official to visit Poland since then-President Jimmy Carter came here in 1977, and his visit signals a warming of relations between the two countries.

The United States and Poland officially agreed Saturday to an exchange of ambassadors. John R. Davis Jr., a career diplomat currently in charge of the American Embassy here, is to be named ambassador. The Poles have named Deputy Foreign Minister Jan Kinast to be Poland’s ambassador in Washington. The last Polish ambassador to the United States defected in 1981.

Combining of Debts

The Polish government has been frustrated for months by a failure to reschedule debt payments to international lenders. Bush told Jaruzelski on Sunday that the United States will support a move to combine Polish debt arrears from 1986 and 1987 with a new schedule of payments for 1988. The concession should help smooth Poland’s negotiations with the lenders.

Dim Prospects

But Polish prospects for additional speedy economic assistance seemed dim. An official in the vice president’s party said the United States wants to see some “social confidence” from the Polish population before committing more assistance to Poland. One evidence of such confidence, the official said, would be independent trade unions.

A spokesman for the vice president said that when Bush brought up Solidarity in the meeting, Jaruzelski responded that the still-banned trade union was “suicidal.” He said Solidarity’s version of reform would bring Poland to “collapse,” according to the spokesman.

Bush met for dinner Sunday night at the American ambassador-designate’s home with Lech Walesa and six other leaders of Solidarity, and he echoed Walesa’s frequently voiced insistence on the need for pluralism in Polish society.

“We support Solidarity, we support pluralism,” Bush told Walesa as the two posed for photographers. “We’ve been very clear about that.” Walesa smiled as a translator repeated Bush’s comment in Polish.

“I had a chance to tell Gen. Jaruzelski that,” Bush went on, “and I don’t think it came as any surprise.”

Bush, who is expected to formally announce his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination soon, began the day by touring two family farms outside Warsaw and delivering a supportive message for the Polish people at a Mass at St. Margaret’s Roman Catholic Church in nearby Lomianki.