US president Barack Obama is to ask Polish leaders to use the lessons they learned during the fall of communism to aid fledgling democratic movements in the Middle East and North Africa.
Mr Obama arrived at Poland’s presidential palace today for a formal welcome ceremony, followed by a meeting with Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski. In addition to the Arab uprising, the two leaders were also expected to discuss security issues, including the Afghan war, and clean energy.
Later today, he will meet with the Polish prime minister, as well as a democracy-building team that recently returned from Tunisia, where popular uprisings led to the overthrow of a long-time autocrat and sparked the protest movements that have swept throughout the region.
Poland’s legendary Solidarity founder Lech Walesa was supposed to attend that meeting, but announced hours before Mr Obama’s arrival here that he had no interest in a meeting that would amount to little more than a photo-opportunity.
Solidarity was a national freedom and labour movement under Walesa’s leadership in the 1980s that helped bring down communism.
Mr Obama’s overnight visit to Poland, his first stop here since taking office, caps a six-day European tour that has also taken him to Ireland, England and France. The whole trip has played out against the backdrop of the Arab rebellions, and Mr Obama has made no efforts to underestimate the potential global impact of a democratic revolution in the Middle East and North Africa.
In the Polish capital, Mr Obama is making a direct comparison between Poland’s overthrow of its communist regime and the movements happening in the Arab world.
The message the White House is hoping to send is that two decades after choosing democracy, Poland has a growing economy and is a strategic partner on the world stage — and the same could happen in Tunisia and Egypt, where another long-time leader has stepped down from power.
Mr Obama arrived in Warsaw last night. He took part in wreath-laying ceremonies at Poland’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and a memorial for those killed in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War. He spoke with Holocaust survivors gathered at the site, telling one elderly man that the memorial was a “reminder of the nightmare” of the Holocaust in which six million Jews were killed.
The president also attended a lengthy private dinner with Central and Eastern European leaders, where aides said there was a discussion about the opportunity the Arab uprisings presented for leaders to show their support for democratic change.
Mr Obama had first planned to come to Poland last year for the funeral of President Lech Kaczynski, who was killed in a plane crash. But his trip was scrapped six hours before his departure because of a volcanic ash cloud over Europe that disrupted air travel.
Shortly before departing Warsaw, Mr Obama will stop at a memorial to those who died in the crash.
The president returns to Washington tonight.