Legalized Solidarity ‘Close,’ Walesa Says

Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, addressing more than 50,000 workers and activists on a religious pilgrimage Sunday, said legalization of the banned union is “very close” but that discipline and obedience will be needed to make it a reality.

Walesa spoke briefly after an outdoor Mass in a steady rain that wound up the annual workers’ pilgrimage to the site of Poland’s holiest shrine, the Black Madonna of Czestochowa.

It was the first time the labor leader had spoken at the religious service, and at first he hesitated. But as the chants of “Solidarity, Solidarity!” grew louder, he approached the microphone.

“Solidarity is very close,” he told the cheering crowd. “Everything depends on you. It depends on how much you are able to obey, and it all depends on us, how we obey,” a reference to his call for discipline among Solidarity activists during negotiations with the government on the banned union’s future.

Walesa has completed three rounds of talks with the Polish government in which his No. 1 goal is restored legal status for Solidarity. Solidarity was suspended after the imposition of martial law in Dec. 13, 1981, after 16 months of legal existence as the East Bloc’s first independent trade union. It was officially banned in 1982.

Bid for Public Support

The Polish leadership opened the talks in an attempt to obtain public support for a vitally needed economic reform program. But it opposes revival of Solidarity in its old form, when it claimed nearly 10 million members and its influence extended far beyond the factories into the political realm.

Instead, the leadership envisions a localized Solidarity that would operate as the sole union in some plants where the official trade unions are weak, with no political clout.

Walesa has indicated he is willing to accept severe restrictions on Solidarity’s operation, and he has called on Solidarity militants bent on political power to leave the union and form their own political associations.

The details of any possible legal role for Solidarity remain to be worked out at round-table talks beginning next month between the government, the Communist Party and representatives of various social groups including Solidarity.

Meanwhile, Poland’s Communist rulers held two emergency weekend meetings in Warsaw as they battled discord in the party over their decision to negotiate with Solidarity.

Party Leaders Meet

Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski met on Saturday with powerful Central Committee secretaries, provincial party chiefs and heads of Central Committee departments, then presided over a full meeting of the ruling Politburo.

The meetings followed statements by party officials that the leadership was deeply divided over the decision to seek a deal with Solidarity.

Solidarity leaders said that Interior Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak, a Politburo member and longtime confidant of Jaruzelski, told Walesa on Friday the disputes were so serious he might lose his government job within two weeks.

Kiszczak said he could give no guarantee that Solidarity would be reinstated because of the violent reaction to such a proposal, union activist Wladyslaw Frasyniuk told reporters.

Western diplomats say they expect the dispute to bring changes in the party’s upper ranks, but there was no immediate evidence that Saturday’s meetings discussed personnel changes.