POLAND:Poland's conservative government faced harsh criticism in the European Parliament yesterday over a law it says is designed to unmask former communist agents.
Bronislaw Geremek, a former Polish foreign minister and veteran anti-communist activist, has challenged Warsaw by refusing to declare whether he worked with the secret police.
A Polish electoral commission spokeswoman and government officials have said Mr Geremek (75) should by law now lose his post in the European Parliament.
Parliamentarians in the Strasbourg-based assembly reacted with fury at the suggestion that the well-respected figure, who helped Poland enter the EU in 2004, could lose his mandate.
"Geremek rightly objects to the witch-hunt his government seeks," Graham Watson, chief of the parliament's Liberal group, said.
The dispute has further tarnished the Polish government's reputation in Brussels. The prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and his twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski, are widely regarded as Eurosceptics and unnecessarily aggressive negotiators.
"It is a shame that his great country is ruled by this government," said Martin Schulz, leader of the Socialist group.
Greens leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit added: "If the [ Polish] government uses Stalinist or fascist methods, we must defend our colleagues against all loonies."
Mr Geremek said he had already declared he had not been an informant for the communist-era secret police and would not do it again because the law introduced in March was flawed and infringed citizens' rights.
"I have only one answer to this imperative demand of humble submission: I refuse," said Mr Geremek, a leader of the Solidarity movement which helped overthrow communism in Poland in 1989.
EU parliamentary officials said the legislature or one of its political groups could challenge the Polish law in the European Court of Justice or the European Court of Human rights.
The law is part of the Kaczynskis' drive to rid Poland of what they say is a "web" of ex-communists, corrupt businessmen and secret police who took control after 1989. - ( Reuters)