After Meeting, Walesa Calls for End to Strikes

WARSAW — Solidarity leader Lech Walesa met with government officials Wednesday for the first time in six years, and afterward, his aides began phoning strikebound enterprises with an appeal from Walesa to end a series of work stoppages now in their third week.

Walesa was driven back to Gdansk to present his report to the strikers at the Lenin Shipyard--on the spot and date, eight years ago, that Solidarity was officially recognized, becoming the Communist world’s first free trade union.

Risks for Both Sides

In what must be considered a major breakthrough for the Polish government and for Solidarity--and one fraught with risks for both sides--Walesa met for two hours with Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, the minister of internal affairs, who last week announced a government proposal for “round-table discussions” in an effort to calm the labor unrest.

Also at the meeting, which took place in a Warsaw villa and went on for two hours, was Roman Catholic Bishop Jerzy Dabrowski and a second government official, Stanislaw Ciosek.

The meeting was described as preparatory to the proposed round-table discussions, which would involve representatives from other groups, and Solidarity spokesmen said there could be more preparatory meetings in the days ahead.

Andrzej Stelmachowski, a Solidarity adviser, told reporters after the meeting that Walesa had only one condition for further talks.

“That was that the issue of Solidarity can be discussed--that it cannot be taken off the agenda,” he said.

Strike organizers nationwide have demanded the legalization of Solidarity, a movement that swept Poland in 1980 and swiftly acquired 10 million members. It was suspended in 1981, and martial law was imposed.

After Wednesday’s meeting with Kiszczak, Walesa met for more than an hour at the Catholic episcopate here with Solidarity advisers including Stelmachowski, Adam Michnik, Bronislaw Geremek and Tadeusz Mazowiecki, key strategists for Walesa throughout the recent behind-the-scenes negotiations with the government.

As Walesa left Gdansk, saying only “I am an optimist,” the advisers hurried to the offices of a Catholic intellectuals club and began phoning strike committees around the country to read a statement from Walesa.

“In the course of the meeting,” the statement said, “I put forward what is at this moment the most important topic of discussion, the road leading to the realization of trade union pluralism and, in that context, Solidarity.

“Those taking part in the discussion recognized that all the issues relating to the trade union movement will be discussed by the round-table (participants). The work of the round table will take up the broad theme of cooperation in the questions of economic, social and political reform for the good of the country.

“I accepted further talks with the authorities. I proposed, therefore, that we break off the present strike activity. I turn to the inter-factory strike committee and (local) strike committees for the effective ending of negotiations on other demands and the suspension of the strikes.”

No Word From Strikers

The phone calls were made about 6 p.m. Warsaw time, and several hours later there still had been no word from the striking factories, ports and shipyards.

“Walesa is the chairman, not the dictator,” Stelmachowski said, adding that the decision to end the strikes would have to come from the workers. It is not likely, however, that the strikers will defy Walesa.

The mood among the Solidarity advisers was one of exhilaration mixed with caution.

“There are no guarantees,” Stelmachowski said, “but I think we are witnessing a certain process of transformation. These are the labor pains of systemic transformation.”

Solidarity advisers say it is not likely that the talks will lead to any quick capitulation by the government on its longstanding refusal to legalize Solidarity or to grant trade union pluralism.

They hint that Walesa has drawn up various plans, some of which could result in the formation of the union in individual factories over a gradual period. Any proposal that would lead to the kind of national organization of the sort Solidarity became in 1980, they say, is out of the question at present.

The possibility of a gradual return by Solidarity was suggested Wednesday by Wladislaw Baka, a powerful member of the Politburo. He told reporters that a rebirth of the “Solidarity structures is unlikely” but added that “it is important to create a schedule.”

“One could agree on a calendar,” he said.

Baka’s comment could be taken as an indication that communication between the government and Solidarity, while carried out principally by intermediaries, has been more effective and intense than at any time since the movement was outlawed.

Krzystof Sliwinski, a Solidarity journalist, said both sides in the meeting agreed that “they don’t want a return to 1981.”

‘Reshaping of Social Order’

“What we’re looking at,” Sliwinski said, “is the whole foundation of the system--a deep reshaping of the social order. It is extremely difficult to say where we will arrive.”

While the Solidarity activists, in a mood of victory, spoke of “systemic transformations” and “reshaping the social order,” the course ahead could be perilous for the union, particularly if the talks bog down in procedural details, a common pitfall in Polish political maneuvering.

Walesa has been careful in the past to maintain the integrity of the union by refusing to be pulled into government councils. If Solidarity and its leaders should get entangled in economic and political issues, they would no longer be the clear and simple voice of opposition.

Stelmachowski pointed out that the participants in the round-table discussion have yet to be chosen and that this will be a subject for further preparatory meetings. Another Solidarity activist spoke of the difficulty of providing an agreed-upon definition for “trade union pluralism.”

Arguments over such matters could stall the process, and some union hard-liners suspect that the government intends to do just that--ensuring that no real change occurs while it appeals to Western democracies for badly needed loans on the basis of its “liberalizing” effort.

Risks for Government

There are risks for the government as well. If the process fails to produce change, it could trigger a political explosion of the magnitude of 1980 and 1981, when strikes by Solidarity virtually shut down the country. Or if the systemic reforms sought by Solidarity are pushed through--a process that no one believes can come quickly or easily--the threat to the Communist Party, entrenched here since 1948, will be profound.

Both the government and Solidarity, however, spoke of the opening as an opportunity to approach a level of cooperation unprecedented in the Communist world, where governments and opposition movements do not mix.

In discussing the meeting, Baka, the Politburo member, spoke of the need to “build social support” in a country where much of the population is “frustrated.”

Sliwinski, the Solidarity journalist, spoke of the urgency of “changing the atmosphere, the mood of hopelessness.”

Piotr Konopka, an aide to Walesa--greeting the Solidarity leader as he returned to the shipyard in Gdansk late Wednesday--said, “I hope this will appear as a historic day.”