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Poland Other Western Countries
After December 1981, Polish relations with the West
were
generally unfriendly for several years. Few high-ranking
Western
delegations travelled to Warsaw, and the Polish government
failed
to end West European support of economic sanctions in
response to
martial law. In 1985 a brief meeting between Jaruzelski
and
French president François Mitterrand yielded no concrete
results.
Jaruzelski's first full-fledged official visit to the West
was
his 1987 trip to Italy, during which he signed an
important
agreement for automobile production with the Fiat
Corporation.
British and French policy toward Poland throughout the
1980s
was consistent with that of Washington. Both United States
allies
imposed sanctions against Warsaw after December 1981. Both
cultivated contacts with nongovernment circles and
assisted the
development of pluralism. And both welcomed the round
table talks
of 1989 and supported economic assistance to the new
government.
The visit of the British prime minister, Margaret
Thatcher,
to Warsaw in November 1988 sent a clear signal of
Britain's
support for pluralism and economic reform in Poland.
Thatcher met
with Solidarity leaders and made a symbolic visit to the
grave of
Father Jerzy Popieluszko, a dissident killed by the Polish
secret
service in 1984. In June 1989, Mitterrand visited Poland.
In
March 1992, Prime Minister Olszewski traveled to Paris and
received Mitterrand's assurances of support for Polish
membership
in the EC.
Relations with Israel improved dramatically after 1988,
when
Poland hosted an international conference to honor the
victims of
the Holocaust and to observe the forty-fifth anniversary
of the
Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Full diplomatic relations were
reestablished in 1990.
Data as of October 1992
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