Walesa Calls for End of Strikes as He Gets Pledge From Poland

GDANSK, Poland â€”  Solidarity leader Lech Walesa today called for an end to the wave of strikes in Poland after the Communist authorities said they were ready to discuss the possibility of re-legalizing his banned trade union.

Walesa sent a telex message to strikers asking them to end their protests after returning to his home city of Gdansk from talks in Warsaw with Interior Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak. The telex was shown to reporters.

Catholic intellectual Andrzej Stelmachowski, a mediator between Solidarity and the authorities, said earlier the authorities had agreed to discuss re-legalizing Solidarity, outlawed under martial law in 1982.

Walesa said the national issues of guaranteeing trade union pluralism and legalizing Solidarity would be taken up in round-table discussions promised by the government in the near future, according to a statement read by an aide.

Strike Could End Soon

The aide, Piotr Konopka, said Walesa was conferring with strikers at the Lenin shipyard and the strike there could end very soon.

The 44-year-old Solidarity leader held the talks earlier today at a Warsaw government villa with Kiszczak, the man who ordered his internment for 11 months after martial law was imposed to crush Solidarity in 1981.

The meeting was Walesa’s first with the authorities since Solidarity was banned in 1982. It coincided with the eighth anniversary of the Gdansk accords that established Solidarity as the Communist world’s first independent trade union.

Stelmachowski said the agreement between Walesa and Kiszczak was only the start of a long process.

“The procedures and shape of Solidarity trade union organizations must be the subject of patient negotiations which must last some time,� he said.

“Please remember this is only the start, not the conclusion, hence I cannot say whether they will succeed.�

After outlawing Solidarity in 1982, party leader Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski created the Communist-led OPZZ trade union federation and banned the existence of more than one union in any workplace.

Re-legalization of Solidarity has been a prime demand of workers who have struck this month at coal mines, ports, shipyards and a steel mill in the second wave of pro-Solidarity strikes this year.

Stelmachowski said two more meetings between Walesa and the authorities would probably be needed before the round-table talks proposed by the government could begin.

No Conditions

Officials have said there will be no conditions at the talks, and all subjects will be open to discussion--including political liberalization and ways of reforming Poland’s obsolescent economy.