POLAND: Lech Kaczynski, the right-wing Polish president and former Solidarity activist, has mistakenly awarded a medal for patriotism to Wojciech Jaruzelski, the former communist general who banned the pro-democracy group and imposed martial law in 1981.
Gen Jaruzelski received a medal for Poles who were deported to Siberia by Soviet forces in 1940, after Adolf Hitler's Germany and Josef Stalin's Soviet Union divided eastern Europe between them under a short-lived non-aggression pact.
However, the office of Mr Kaczynski - a staunch anti-communist who has previously threatened to strip Gen Jaruzelski of his rank and pension - said the president had failed to notice his adversary's name on a list of recipients of the medal.
"I think someone in the president's office made a mistake," said spokesman Maciej Lopinski.
"The president doesn't read all the motions that land on his desk. On the other hand, if the motion was approved by a competent minister, there was no reason to reject it," Mr Lopinski added.
On Polish television yesterday, Gen Jaruzelski (82) proudly showed off his medal.
"I particularly appreciate this because it seems to show that the president is able to rise above past political differences," he said.
A member of a well-known aristocratic family, while in Siberia the young Jaruzelski signed up for the Polish army that fought alongside the Red Army in liberating western Russia, Poland and parts of Germany from Nazi rule.
Gen Jaruzelski's father died in Siberia and he suffered the snow blindness that forced him to wear the dark glasses that became his trademark. As the head of Poland's communist government, Gen Jaruzelski imposed martial law on December 13th, 1981, and outlawed the Solidarity movement that was pushing for democracy and economic reforms.
He has always fiercely rejected jibes that he was a Soviet stooge, insisting instead that martial law saved restive Poland from the kind of Red Army crackdown that shattered reform movements in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
After winning election late last year, Mr Kaczynski threatened to reopen Gen Jaruzelski's file and hold him accountable for the internment of thousands of government opponents and the deaths of almost 100 people during 18 months of martial law.
"I think the time is coming when all the circumstances of the decision made 24 years ago will be explained," Mr Kaczynski said late last year, insisting that the threat of Soviet invasion at the time was negligible.
