Polish Party Unable to Find Solution to Unrest

After two days of intense discussion, Poland’s Communist Party failed to come up with clear-cut steps to defuse the nation’s labor unrest, although party leader Wojciech Jaruzelski hinted Sunday that changes in the government could come later this week.

Gen. Jaruzelski suggested that the National Consultative Council be reconstituted as a National Council of Reconciliation, aimed at alleviating political and economic tensions. He voiced support for the idea of “round-table” discussions with representatives of striking workers but announced no concrete economic measures.

The Central Committee plenum decided against wage and price freezes and heard repeated calls for “intensified analysis” of Poland’s troubles.

Workers at one more coal mine ended their strike Sunday, cutting to 10 the number of work stoppages still going on in the country. One coal mine remained on strike as well as ports and shipyards in Szczecin and Gdansk.

Jaruzelski acknowledged that the government, headed by Premier Zbigniew Messner, came in for repeated criticism at the party meeting.

‘Must Not Look for Scapegoats’

“We must not, however, look for scapegoats,” he said. He added that a special parliamentary commission, to meet later this week, will take up the question of changes in the government, with consultations including the party’s parliamentary faction.

“We are not used in the party to criticizing the government from the rostrum of the Central Committee,” Jaruzelski said in his closing remarks, broadcast on national television. “We have always done that silently, in the family. Now we are finishing with that practice.”

Echoing the criticism of many speakers at the party meeting, Jaruzelski said the strike situation in Poland “proved that problems which should have been solved offhand have been dragging on endlessly.”

Earlier this week, Interior Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak announced that he had been authorized by the government to open round-table discussions with “various social and employee groups,” and the government has since made it clear that the announcement was intended to include Lech Walesa, leader of the banned Solidarity trade union.

Referring to the proposal Sunday, Jaruzelski said:

“We are invariably in favor of settling even the most difficult questions by patience and dialogue. The hand remains outstretched. But there is no chance for an all-or-nothing attitude.”

Freedom and Responsibility

Then Jaruzelski echoed a Solidarity slogan--”There is no freedom without Solidarity”--by saying, “There is no freedom without responsibility.”

A spokesman for the Central Committee, Jerzy Majka, told journalists after the meeting that the party had not changed its longstanding position that Solidarity is an illegal organization. He also said that the party had decided that the “round-table” discussions would be open to all but those who declared themselves members of “an illegal organization.”

He indicated, however, that this prohibition did not extend to Walesa, a position that suggested that the government is trying to define any talks with Walesa as discussions with a private citizen, rather than as a founder and leader of the banned trade union movement.

It is not certain how Solidarity would respond to this, but it is not likely that Walesa would renounce his role in the leadership of the union in order to meet with the government.

Stinging Criticism of Solidarity

Solidarity came in for stinging criticism from the party leaders, Majka said, some of whom said the union “should be renamed ‘the strike union.’ ”

While sources close to both the party and the government say that the proposals for talks are concrete, the comments by Majka and other party members suggested that there could be several days of behind-the-scenes negotiation before any meeting between Walesa and the government takes place.