Polish PM takes aim at EU charter

Polish PM takes aim at EU charter

Germany, which now holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, is seeking to revive a debate over the constitution. Chancellor Angela Merkel has proposed a conference on the document in June and its ratification in 2009.

But Poland, along with Britain and the Czech Republic, is skeptical of the charter, which is meant to streamline decision-making and improve the bloc's international standing by creating an EU foreign minister.

Kaczynski, who has called Merkel's 2009 ratification target date "wishful thinking," said Warsaw supported a new treaty for a more effective Europe. But he said the voting system and other institutional changes would have to be negotiated.

Poland, the largest of the eight ex-Communist states that joined the EU in May 2004, has proved to be one of the bloc's most awkward and recalcitrant members.

In a style some say is reminiscent of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, Kaczynski and his twin brother, Lech, the Polish president, have defended national interests and refused to compromise on issues ranging from state aid for struggling Polish shipyards to relations with Moscow.

In November, Warsaw blocked negotiations on a new EU-Russia pact covering energy, economic cooperation and human rights to protest Moscow's 16-month ban on Polish meat imports.

Poland contends the ban is politically motivated, and the dispute threatens to sour an EU-Russia summit meeting May 18. While Kaczynski said all sides were seeking a solution, Polish officials said privately that there had been little progress.

Kaczynski also defended the decision earlier this week by a Polish court to charge the former Polish military leader, Wojciech Jaruzelski, with "communist crimes" for declaring martial law in an attempt to eliminate the Solidarity movement in 1981.

If found guilty Jaruzelski, 83, could face 10 years in prison for his role in suppressing Solidarity, the first free trade union in the Soviet bloc, which openly defied communist order. Jaruzelski has always defended the crackdown as necessary to prevent a Soviet invasion.

The prime minister, who along with his brother was a Solidarity activist, said it was necessary to hold the former Communist leader to account. He said Jaruzelski was living comfortably in a "wonderful house," with a "pension at the level of a former president." He said those with "blood on their hands" deserved to be tried for their crimes.

Kaczynski will also press EU justice and home affairs ministers at a meeting Thursday in Luxembourg to include the crimes committed under Stalin under a new EU law that would make Holocaust denial a crime under some conditions. But a majority of EU member states have balked at the request.

Poland, a largely Roman Catholic and deeply conservative country, has been accused of being out of step with other EU countries on issues such as homosexuality and abortion.

Poland's abortion law is among the strictest in the 27-member EU, with abortion only available in cases of rape, incest, a threat to the mothers' life or untreatable fetal disease. Both Kaczynski brothers have used strong rhetoric about homosexuality at a time when gay marriages are legal in some EU countries, including Spain.

Kaczynski on Wednesday lashed out at his critics, saying that homosexuals had always been welcomed in Poland and noted that the country's penal code did not criminalize homosexuality. "In Poland there is no tradition of persecuting homosexuals," he said.