Jaruzelski Urges ‘Brave Turn’ to End Problems

Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski urged Communist Party officials Saturday to take a “brave turn” to solve political and economic problems that have led to the most serious labor unrest here since the Solidarity era of the early 1980s.

Gen. Jaruzelski’s remarks, opening a Central Committee plenum, came amid growing speculation that a meeting between the government and leaders of the banned trade union could be held soon, perhaps within a week.

Government spokesman Jerzy Urban added further strength Saturday to the possibility that such a meeting may soon take place. He said that conditions laid down by the government do not exclude Solidarity nor its outspoken leader, Lech Walesa.

The government announced Friday that it was ready to meet for “round-table” discussions with “representatives of various social and employee groups,” as long as the groups do not “reject Poland’s constitutional order.”

Urban added: “The proposal is directed at all who do not reject the existing legal and constitutional order. One may also understand this as those who behave, or are ready to behave, in a way complying with the law.”

Warsaw Wants Settlement

A source close to the behind-the-scenes negotiations between the government and Solidarity--conducted principally by intermediaries with ties to the Roman Catholic Church--said the government wants the current round of strikes concluded before any meeting is held. Solidarity wants the meeting to begin before it calls off the remaining strikes.

Eleven strikes are still going on, reduced from a peak of about 20 earlier last week. The strikes began Aug. 15 in coal mines in southern Poland and spread as far as the country’s two Baltic ports in Gdansk and Szczecin.

Walesa left the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk on Saturday, going first to his home and then conferring with Solidarity advisers at St. Brigida’s Church.

Asked if he would meet with Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, the interior minister who announced the government’s proposal, Walesa said, “If the shipyard workers say so, possibly yes. But it is not important who meets with whom.”

The party meeting in Warsaw continued into the night Saturday and was expected to reconvene today, as the top officials debated what to do about the nation’s economic recovery plan, which has been rocked by two outbreaks of strikes this year.

In addition to pressing for the legalization of Solidarity--or at least an alternative trade union free from government control--the workers are asking for pay increases to offset a steep rise in prices.

Jaruzelski denied that the party meeting was called due to the strikes.

“The situation is complex,” he said, “but we have not lost control even for a moment. . . . The security and stability of the socialist Polish state cannot and will not be harmed.” But he called on the plenum to make a “critical and self-critical analysis of the causes for the present tensions.”

He added: “In short, what is needed is a brave turn. Courage to break the stereotypes, limitations and barriers. Courage to use unconventional but most of all effective means.”

While Jaruzelski’s tone when referring to the strikes was mild, other speakers came down hard on the strikers.

‘Destructive Character’

“They have an anarchy-generating, destructive character,” said Jozef Czyrek, a Politburo member. “They cannot be accepted.”

But Czyrek also said, in a later speech to the Communist leaders, that the party was ready to “meet halfway” the worker demands for trade union pluralism. “However,” he added, “we will oppose ideas which would give rise to conflicts.” He said that party reform was equally threatened by “anarchist-destructive and bureaucratic-conservative” forces.

In Gdansk, Solidarity adviser Adam Michnik, replied to Czyrek.

“No one from Solidarity,” Michnik said, “intends to exercise what Czyrek calls confrontational pluralism. It is not our intent to use trade union pluralism to intensify social conflicts.”

The party meeting will be followed later this week by a meeting of a special commission of the Parliament, which will discuss specific steps to combat the wage-price spiral that many observers here believe could set off more strikes unless corrected.