Pope inspired strikes - Walesa

POLAND: Former Polish president Lech Walesa hailed Pope John Paul II yesterday as the inspiration behind the Solidarity trade union, at the start of celebrations to mark 25 years since its birth in the Gdansk shipyards.

But on a day when Alexander Kwasniewski, an ex-communist who is Poland's current president, offered an olive branch to his long-time foe, Mr Walesa, one of Mr Walesa's allies from August 1980 denounced him as a traitor.

Remembering the stirring homilies delivered by John Paul when he returned to his homeland in 1979, Mr Walesa said: "He did not tell us to make a revolution, he did not call for a coup, but he suggested so strongly that we all had to define ourselves."

He recalled the pontiff saying, "Let the spirit descend and renew the face of this land", a year after his election as pope and a year before strikes at the Gdansk shipyard spread across the country.

During a special session of parliament, Mr Kwasniewski praised Mr Walesa (61), after years of feuding since he beat him in a presidential election: "We all live in a free Poland and there would be no free Poland without you."

But Anna Walentynowicz - the woman whose sacking along with Mr Walesa sparked the Gdansk strikes - and many other former Solidarity activists accuse Mr Walesa of betraying the movement's ideals by compromising with former communists.