Walesa, Polish Regime to Meet First Time in 6 Years : But Strikes by Solidarity Will Go On

Solidarity founder Lech Walesa will hold his first talks with the Polish leadership in six years on Wednesday in a government effort to end weeks of labor turmoil, his aides said today.

Walesa will confer with Interior Minister Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak in a meeting attended by a representative of the Roman Catholic Church, said senior Solidarity adviser Adam Michnik.

The meeting will take place on the eighth anniversary of the Aug. 31, 1980, accords signed by Walesa and the Polish authorities in Gdansk that set up Solidarity as the first free trade union in communist-ruled Eastern Europe.

Senior Solidarity adviser Tadeusz Mazowiecki called the decision to hold talks “a historic moment.”

Walesa, who had earlier in the evening left the strikebound Lenin shipyard to confer with top advisers and Roman Catholic Bishop Tadeusz Goclowski at St. Brygida’s Church, later left the rectory with Goclowski to the cheers and chants of supporters.

The government announced earlier today that talks including the independent union, which now is outlawed, could begin as soon as Walesa ended the Lenin shipyard strike.

Talks Automatic

Jerzy Urban, the government spokesman, said at his weekly news conference: “The stoppage of strikes by Mr. Lech Walesa and the shipyard where he works would mean automatically convening a round table.”

But Walesa aide Pioitr Konopka said, “For the present, the strike is still on.”

Walesa told journalists on Monday that he is ready to join talks with the authorities unconditionally as soon as they indicate readiness to discuss the re-legalization of Solidarity, banned under martial law in 1982.

Asked whether this could be discussed at the talks, Urban said there are no conditions and the agenda will be open.

“As far as the order and scope of the talks are concerned, this is open to agreement by the participants in the discussions,” he said.

Talks involving Walesa and Solidarity would represent his first contact with high officials since he was interned in 1982.

Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski’s government imposed martial law in December, 1981, to suppress Solidarity and outlawed it in 1982. Strikers demand that it be made legal again.

Opposition figures have repeatedly said the government cannot push through its crucial economic reform program without reaching a consensus with the people through talks with Solidarity and the Catholic opposition.

Symbolism Conceded

Urban acknowledged that Walesa’s presence at the talks would indicate that he represented a mass movement. Authorities have hitherto dismissed the Solidarity leader as a non-person since outlawing the union.

Round table talks with the opposition were proposed last Friday by Interior Minister Kiszczak. The proposal was approved during the weekend by the Communist Party’s policy-making Central Committee.

While the government expressed its willingness to talk, strikers at the Stalowa Wola steel mill in southeast Poland said soldiers had moved into the town and helicopters flew over the plant at about noon.

Workers are occupying the shipyard and steel mill, as is the custom during strikes in Poland.

Ten enterprises in Poland remained on strike today. At its height, the current labor unrest involved 20 sites employing 100,000 people and was the worst in seven years.