Solidarity Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki began his first foreign visit Wednesday assured of $400 million in Italian aid to help see Poland through an economically critical winter.
Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti greeted Mazowiecki at Rome's top-security Ciampino Airport. The Polish prime minister was accompanied by a team of economic experts from Warsaw.The trip was his first out of Poland since Aug. 17, when President Wojciech Jaruzelski appointed Mazowiecki, 62, to head the first non-communist government in Eastern Europe since World War II.
The visit was billed as a vital weather vane to Mazowiecki's overtures to the West for desperately needed economic aid.