Polish President Endorses Plan for Solidarity Cabinet

Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski on Thursday accepted Lech Walesa’s proposal for a Solidarity-led government, paving the way for the first opposition government in the Soviet Bloc.

The historic step, if carried to its conclusion, could end a 45-year-old Communist monopoly on power in Poland.

A statement issued by Jaruzelski’s office after a two-hour meeting with Walesa said the president would “urgently consider the presented proposition and conduct appropriate consultations aiming at the quickest possible appointment of such a government.”

The new prime minister, according to Solidarity lawmaker Jacek Kuron, will come from the ranks of the Solidarity labor movement, but a choice for the post remains unsettled. Walesa, after a week of indecision, appears to be sticking to his latest position--that he does not want the post.

‘Several Candidates’

He told reporters after the session with Jaruzelski: “There are several suitable candidates. It is the president’s matter. . . . Let’s respect the president. This matter is in his hands.”

Walesa’s personal choice for prime minister reportedly is Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a longtime Walesa adviser and current editor of the weekly Solidarity newspaper.

An opposition coalition that includes Solidarity has offered two other candidates: Bronislaw Geremek, Solidarity’s floor leader in the Sejm, or lower house of the National Assembly, and Kuron, an activist in the Polish opposition for two decades.

At Thursday’s meeting with Jaruzelski and Walesa, Prime Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak also formally submitted his resignation, asking after 16 days on the job to be relieved of the task of forming a government--an assignment he found impossible amid the new alignments in Polish politics.

Attending the meeting with Walesa at Jaruzelski’s office in the Belvedere Palace were the leaders of Solidarity’s new coalition partners, the United Peasants’ Party and the Democratic Party. The two minor parties decided Wednesday to abandon a 40-year-old alliance with the Communists, thus shifting control of the National Assembly to Solidarity.

Democratic Party leader Jerzy Jozwiak, explaining his party’s “momentous decision,” said Poland was “passing an exam in political maturity.”

Details to Be Worked Out

Solidarity lawmaker Jaroslaw Kaszynski, whose negotiations over the past week were instrumental in bringing about the crossover by the United Peasants’ and Democratic parties, said some details are yet to be worked out with the Communists over the assignment of Cabinet ministries.

Already, Solidarity has made it clear that it will raise no objection to the Communists’ retaining control of the sensitive Defense and Interior ministries. This stance assures the Communists that the military and the police establishment will not be dismantled by a new government whose members have opposed government policy in both areas--and have been longtime targets of police harassment and arrest.

United Peasants’ Party leader Roman Malinowski confirmed that the new coalition plans to offer at least the Defense and Interior ministries to the Communists.

On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry said that although Moscow is “very concerned” about the Polish situation, “we do not intend to interfere in the internal affairs of that country.”

The spokesman, Yuri A. Gremitsky, described as “sensible” Walesa’s remark earlier this week that a Solidarity-led government would not alter Poland’s commitment to the Warsaw Pact.

Polish political observers said it is not likely that Jaruzelski could have taken the decision to allow the formation of a Solidarity-led government without consulting Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The evident approval by Gorbachev of the arrangement--or at least his refusal to block it--represents a step of enormous importance in Eastern Europe, amounting to the first clear proof that the so-called “Brezhnev Doctrine” is dead. The policy, devised by former Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev, holds that the Soviet Union has the right to intercede when Communist interests are threatened in satellite countries.

Division in Party

The rapidly developing political situation, unthinkable a year ago, has caused consternation in the Communist Party, now more clearly divided than ever between the old guard and members of a younger generation eager to present themselves as social democrats in the Western European mold. Some of them--perhaps as many as 30 of the 173 members of the Communist delegation--are said to be on the verge of joining Solidarity.

One of the party’s youthful reformers, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, said Thursday that it is important that any solution arrived at by Walesa include reformers in the party.

“For us,” he said, “the most important thing is coming to the common idea that we must cooperate.”

Kuron, the lawmaker who reported to other Solidarity members of the National Assembly on Walesa’s meeting with Jaruzelski, said the new coalition is “open to any reform forces.” This was interpreted as an invitation to reform-minded Communists.

In an interview with German television Thursday, Walesa echoed this theme.

“You just can’t skirt this party,” he said. “You cannot just act as if there are only hard-line Communists in this party. There are also people interested in moving this party along.”

Dazed by Setbacks

The Communist Party, however, has been dazed by a yearlong series of setbacks, set in motion early in 1988 with the outbreak of Solidarity-backed strikes, the first since the labor movement was legally banned in 1981. By August, 1988, a second wave of strikes brought the government to the bargaining table with Solidarity--a move that many of the union’s activists opposed.

Walesa, however, weathered the opposition he encountered from Solidarity’s militant wing and sat down with Kiszczak, then the interior minister, to set the guidelines for a series of “round-table negotiations” that began in earnest last February.

The negotiations led to Solidarity’s legalization in April and the Soviet Bloc’s first partially free parliamentary elections in June.

A later round-table agreement on the elections brought Solidarity charging to a commanding position as its candidates swept the newly created Senate and won all seats for which it could compete in the Sejm. The Communists failed to elect 33 of their candidates, even though they were allowed to run unopposed.

With the tide of public support running clearly with Solidarity, the two minor parties that had helped to give the Communists control of the National Assembly began to waver. On Wednesday, in an effort to salvage a political future, they made the decision to join forces with Solidarity.

According to Solidarity lawmakers, details are still to be worked out with Jaruzelski and the Communist power brokers who, they say, are still capable of tough bargaining.

“We have the intention of forming a government,” Kaszynski said. “But there is still a matter of reaching agreement with those who have the most power.”