Poland Viewed as Model for E. Europe, Gore Says : Diplomacy: Poles are ‘showing the way to the future,’ and concern over Russia will not sway U.S. interest in their country, vice president vows.

The United States will promote Poland as a model for other Eastern European nations, Vice President Al Gore told Poles on Tuesday, promising that U.S. efforts to help Russia would not detract from American interest in their country.

Gore, closing his first official journey abroad as vice president, told lawmakers and other dignitaries here that Poland is important in part “because it is showing the way to the future for an enormous part of the globe.”

He cited the “green shoots of free enterprise springing up in cities and on the land” in Poland, its newly free press and its efforts to clean up its environmental problems.

“In Poland the signs are, after all, a lot better than elsewhere,” he said. “Travelers from the rest of Eastern Europe come to Poland to catch their breath. The Poles are keeping the promises.”

The vice president noted that this year marked the 500th anniversary of the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish Parliament, an anniversary that he said shows Poland’s deep democratic roots. Gore contrasted the economic and political progress of Poland with developments in another former Communist state, the rump Yugoslavia, now made up of Serbia and Montenegro.

“Serbia and Poland stand at opposite ends of a moral world,” he said. “To which side does the future belong? I am here to state my faith in the proposition that the future belongs to Poland’s resolve to seek a democratic society, where differences among people are celebrated, not feared.”

Gore dismissed suggestions that Clinton Administration efforts on behalf of Russia would detract from America’s commitment to Poles or other Eastern Europeans, saying: “Some have suggested wrongly that the U.S. has forgotten East-Central Europe. Nothing could be further from the truth. . . . Our efforts here in your region and our efforts farther east are complementing and reinforcing parts of the same policy.”

The United States has given more than $4 billion in aid to Poland since 1990, making it the largest regional recipient of American aid; the total includes $2.4 billion in debt reduction and more than $1 billion in direct aid.

Although free-market enterprises are growing rapidly in Poland, especially in its largest cities, sections of the country that depended on government-owned enterprises continue to suffer from economic woes: Unemployment continues to rise; industrial production is flat.

Gore’s visit was the first high-level contact between the two countries’ administrations, although President Clinton has spoken twice by telephone with President Lech Walesa.

This trip let Gore conduct two days of talks with Polish officials, while participating Monday in events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of Jews against the Nazis.

In his comments to Parliament, Gore said he had come “to reaffirm, at the outset of a new Administration, the basis of U.S.-Polish relations, including long-term U.S. support and engagement with Poland.”

Gore was cool to one Polish proposal, a Walesa suggestion that the United States could aid both Poland and Russia by buying Polish agriculture industry products and giving them to Russians. “In practice, there are great difficulties in making arrangements of that kind work,” Gore told reporters Monday after meeting with Walesa at Belweder Palace.

Gore met with Walesa, Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka and Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was in Warsaw for the uprising observance.

Gore on Tuesday also discussed environmental problems with Polish business leaders, environmentalists and officials at the U.S. Peace Corps’ Warsaw offices. Poland faces daunting environmental problems--such as a Baltic Sea that is one of the world’s most polluted salt-water bodies.