New document found in Poland points to Walesa's cooperation with Communists

WARSAW, Poland, Feb. 18 (UPI) -- New documents found in Poland purportedly show that Lech Walesa was a paid informant for the Communists before becoming the leader of the Solidarity movement.

The 279 pages of material, seized from the home of the late Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, Poland's last interior minister of its communist era, allegedly include a signed commitment to provide information and payment receipts with the name of Walesa, and "Bolek," his code name. Lukasz Kaminski of the National Remembrance Institute, Poland's government-affiliated historical archives, said the documents appear to be genuine.

Walesa, 72, was a shipyard electrician who helped propel the anti-Communist Solidarity movement in the early 1980s, and was elected president in 1990 after Communism was brought down without bloodshed in Poland. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and although he has acknowledged an agreement to work as an informant, he said he never acted on it; in 2000 a specially convened court found no evidence of Walesa's alleged collaboration with Communist agencies.

Kaminski said the documents found in the possession of Kiszczak's widow, who hoped to sell them, still must be analyzed by historians and will eventually be made public.

A statement from Walesa suggested the documents were forged. The historical archives, that now holds Kiszczak's material, has close ties to Poland's conservative and nationalist Law and Justice Party, which won control of the government in elections held in October. The new allegations came several weeks after Walesa accused the party of working to undermine Polish democracy.