Stop Threats, Walesa Tells Communists : Demands for Wider Role in Solidarity Government Rebuffed

Solidarity leader Lech Walesa warned Poland’s Communist Party on Monday to back off from a strategy of “threats and blackmail” in an effort to increase its role in a Solidarity-led government.

Walesa spoke out as Solidarity and the Communist Party fired the first exchange in what is likely to become several days of sharp debate over the extent of Communist participation in the new government.

Countering demands issued at the close of a weekend meeting of the party’s Central Committee, Walesa warned that the Communists could be shut out if they try to hang on to power by force.

Country ‘Needs Reform’

“Poland needs reform,” Walesa declared in a statement issued by his office in Gdansk. “Only work on a concrete shape of these reforms gives credibility to the political forces active in our country. No one will achieve that through a policy of threats and blackmail.”

At a meeting with reporters, Walesa used earthier language: “Fish begins to rot from its head. We need reforms. If the party doesn’t understand that and starts provoking and only provoking--and they are--then it will lose everything.”

Under the bargain struck between Walesa and President Wojciech Jaruzelski, who on Saturday asked Solidarity adviser Tadeusz Mazowiecki to form a government, the Communists are to be left in charge of at least the defense and interior ministries. This is thought to be a minimum guarantee to secure Soviet approval for the first opposition government in Poland since the Communist takeover after World War II.

Much of the debate at the Central Committee meeting centered on whether the Communists should assume the role of an opposition party or push for larger participation in a Solidarity government. According to party spokesman Marek Krol, none of the committee’s 230 members advocated going into opposition, a prospect no Communist Party in Eastern Europe has had to face until now.

“We are interested in a partner-like participation in a government whose foundation will be a respected coalition agreement,” Slawomir Wiatr, a party secretary, said.

A resolution adopted by the committee said its “representation in the new government must reflect its political and state potential. Otherwise, we will not be able to take co-responsibility for future developments.”

Daniel Passent, a writer for the party weekly Polityka, said the Communists will press Solidarity for control of the foreign and finance ministries as well as defense and interior. But the chances of Solidarity giving in to these demands seems remote, as Walesa indicated in his barbed response.

“If the party does not draw proper conclusions, and so far it has not, then it will have no chance whatever in the future,” he said. “It should stop rocking the boat and start doing its job.”

Walesa met with Mazowiecki and other Solidarity leaders in Gdansk over the weekend to discuss the formation of the government. Parliament’s formal election of Mazowiecki, 62, the editor of Solidarity’s weekly newspaper, is expected this week.

Solidarity, along with its new coalition partners in the United Peasants’ Party and Democratic Party, are especially interested in taking control of economic ministries and departments dealing with health and social welfare.

Angry Consumers, Workers

Its central problem will be how to introduce or maintain economic reforms in the midst of already acute economic hardships. Widespread food shortages and rising prices have angered consumers and industrial workers, bringing a steady stream of strikes.

Most of the strikes have been settled quickly, often with generous pay increases, as the government has sought to keep the situation under control. But the reports of quick management capitulation have fueled other work stoppages, and in some cases in recent months, strikers who have laid down their tools in the morning saw their pay nearly double by quitting time.

Solidarity officials said Monday that they are trying to halt a wave of strikes in southern Poland, where coal miners and transport workers have gone out to protest wage levels. They said young radicals, leading strikes in the mines in the southwestern region of Katowice, refused to listen to appeals by regional Solidarity officials and sent representatives to other mines to press for sympathy strikes.

“We are afraid the strikes may spread, although the idea is supported by only a small number of radical miners,” Adam Kowalczyk, the Solidarity leader in Katowice, said. “The regional Solidarity committee takes no responsibility for the strikes, which are pointless and unnecessary in the current political and economic situation.”

Solidarity is likely to face difficult decisions on these questions, and this could put its traditional trade union role in conflict with socially painful reforms it enacts.

‘Feelings of Helplessness’

Mazowiecki, while urging Poles to shake off their “feelings of helplessness,” has cautioned that sacrifices will be necessary.

“If we have to make a choice between efficiency and the interests which the union upholds, then we will refer to public opinion,” he said. “But if sacrifices are necessary, then people must accept them.”

Another key question facing both the Communists and Solidarity involves the nomenklatura , the pervasive network of Communist Party members spread throughout business, industry and all levels of government, from village and township upward.

Solidarity supporters suspect that the members of the nomenklatura , who hold their positions solely by virtue of party membership, will attempt to block Solidarity’s efforts to impose even a minimum of efficiency on the system.

TEST FOR GORBACHEV--Poland’s reforms pose a challenge for Moscow. Page 6