Ex-Polish leader apologises for Czech invasion

[emad]

Ex-Polish leader apologises for Czech invasion

Ian Traynor
Monday August 22, 2005
The Guardian


Poland's former communist and military leader Wojciech Jaruzelski apologised yesterday for the first time for his role in the Kremlin's invasion of Czechoslovakia 37 years ago.

At the age of 81, the retired general, who also sought to crush the Solidarity movement in his native country and imposed martial law in 1981, used the anniversary of the Red Army invasion of what was then Czechoslovakia to call the event "shameful".

As defence minister of Poland under Soviet control and in a key position in the communist bloc's Warsaw Pact military alliance, General Jaruzelski ordered Polish troops to take part in the invasion, a role that has rankled with Poland's Czech neighbours ever since.

"In 1968 I was the defence minister implementing a political decision, convinced that there were grounds for that on the basis of the information available to us then," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1553710,00.html

[agingdem]

1. Too late!

[moodforaday]

2. The day he also apologizes

for the Martial Law he imposed in Poland in 1981 to strangle the Solidarity movement, hell will freeze over and pigs will fly in neat flocks over our land.

[ovidsen]

3. Better late than never.

Look at it this way. Both Poland and the former Czechoslovakia are now a lot more independent and free than they were in 1968, or even 1989. Hate the sin, forgive the sinner and all that....

[emad]

4. Do NOT mention ze vor.....

!

[Igel]

5. Ever Russia's lackey.

I have no sympathy for Jaruzelski's contrition, real or imagined.

It's rather like having your supervisor apologize for reassigning you office after you're laid off for some trivial infraction, while the manager continues to say that laying you off was responsible for the security of the free world and a moral imperative.