Ties With Solidarity ‘Really Good,’ Shevardnadze Says

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze said today that relations with Poland’s Solidarity-led government are good and that Moscow wants to build a relationship based on equality.

“Our relations are good now, really good,” Shevardnadze told reporters after the Kremlin’s first in-depth talks with the Polish government that last month ended 45 years of Communist-dominated rule.

“If we want the situation to be good in Europe, we must build relations on the basis of equality, good-neighborliness, observance of treaty obligations and full friendship,” he said.

Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski raised thorny issues in talks with Shevardnadze held Tuesday, such as repatriation of Poles deported to the Soviet Union and compensation for Polish victims of Stalinist crimes.

Today Shevardnadze met Polish Communist Party chief Mieczyslaw Rakowski and President Wojciech Jaruzelski.

Shevardnadze, the most senior Kremlin leader to visit Warsaw since Mazowiecki was appointed in August, expressed satisfaction with his meetings and said Moscow will let Warsaw work out its reforms independently.

He said the two countries must set up “new economic mechanisms” and will work to dig up the truth about difficult periods in their relations. He said he sees no problem in allowing ethnic Poles in the Soviet Union to emigrate to Poland.

He said Mazowiecki, a former prisoner in Communist jails as a Solidarity activist, will visit Moscow in late November.

Asked what are the limits of Soviet tolerance of reform, he replied: “We don’t set up order for other countries.”

Shevardnadze’s remarks were a fresh sign of the Soviet Union’s policy of non-interference as Hungary and Poland lead moves away from communism.