Solidarity leader Lech Walesa conditionally agreed Saturday to meet with the interior minister in a bid to break an impasse in efforts to arrange crucial opposition-government talks.
But Walesa said a meeting with Interior Minister Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak to make arrangements for the talks could take place only if authorities agreed to keep the Lenin Shipyard open and reinstate workers who participated in August strikes.In a statement released following a meeting of the Solidarity National Executive Committee, Walesa also said a government demand that two of his advisers be dropped from a Solidarity negotiating team in proposed government-opposition talks is not negotiable.
The government proposed so-called roundtable talks with opposition groups on the shape of an economic reform program and on the possible re-legalization of Solidarity after a!wmve of strikes in August, but the two sides have not been able to agree on a definite date.
Walesa, responding to a letter from Kiszczak Wednesday, said a meeting with the aim of paving the way for broader government-opposition talks could be held immediately if his conditions are met.
"I propose to fix the date of the meeting soon after receiving the news that they (striking workers) were reinstated and that the implementation of the decision concerning closure of the shipyard has been suspended."
In three rounds of talks between the two men that ended the August strikes Kiszczak agreed there would be no repercussions against the participants. But more than one hundred people, mostly coal miners, were dismissed.
"I expect fulfillment of the promise Gen. Kiszczak gave me during my meeting with him on Sept. 15 dealing with the end of the reprisals against the participants of the strikes," Walesa said.