Polish troops may have Iraq duty extended

POLAND: Poland's president-elect Lech Kaczynksi has said that he may extend the service of 1,700 Polish soldiers scheduled to leave Iraq early next year and that Poles should vote in 2010 on whether to join the euro zone.

Meanwhile, Poland's new right-wing coalition is expected to agree a programme for government and present a new cabinet by the weekend, five weeks after the general election.

"I would like to discuss with President Bush . . . the conditions under which we could remain [ in Iraq]," Mr Kaczynski said yesterday after receiving a telephone call from the US president congratulating him on his victory in Sunday's election.

The Law and Justice Party (PiS), headed by Mr Kaczynski's twin brother Jaroslaw made fresh overtures yesterday to its likely coalition partner, the Civic Platform (PO), in talks stalled by the presidential election.

Mr Donald Tusk, the leader of the PO and its presidential candidate, finished Sunday's election almost 10 points behind Mr Kaczynski, despite having had a clear lead for most of the campaign.

Now, a month after the general election, the parties of both men have to agree a programme to bridge their policy differences and tackle problems, such as 18 per cent unemployment, the highest in the EU.

The pro-business PO favours liberal economic reforms such as a flat tax rate and curtailing spending to reduce debt.

The PiS has described the PO's economic policies as neo-liberal and detrimental to social cohesion.

Mr Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, the PiS politician likely to be Poland's next prime minister, said yesterday that the two parties would agree a programme combining the PiS pledge to preserve social cohesion with the PO pledge to lower taxes and cut bureaucracy to encourage growth.

Michal Kaminski, an aide to the president-elect, said that the new government would pursue a "third way" policy. He described the PiS as a "Christian New Labour".

Mr Kaczynski said that he would seek to improve ties with Poland's neighbours, but he warned that relations with Germany could be poisoned by plans to build a Berlin centre documenting the history of Germans expelled from what is now Polish and Czech territory after the second World War.

Poles see this as an attempt to present German civilians as victims of the second World War and are nervous because the project has the support of some leading members of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which is set to lead Germany's next government.

Mr Kaczynski suggested that relations with president Vladimir Putin would be greatly improved if he visited Warsaw more often and the staunchly anti-communist president-elect appeared to offer an indirect invitation to Mr Putin yesterday.

Mr Kaczynski has been a critic of the EU in the past, but observers suggested he might now adopt a softer line. The new foreign minister is likely to be Jan Rokita, of the PO, who is seen as more EU-friendly than the PiS, even though he coined the notorious expression "Nice or Death" when demanding that Poland reject the revised voting rights of the constitutional treaty.

The Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper warned the Kaczynski twins yesterday to rein in the "extreme right and populist" allies who had helped them to win power and "not allow these factions [ to] ruin Poland".