March 5, 1999

WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- Parliament approved minor changes Friday to a long-debated law that would for the first time allow victims of communist-era repression to see their secret police files.

The law was passed in September following a decade of debate over whether opening old files from the 1944-89 communist regime would help or harm the country's efforts to deal with the painful decades of communist rule.

President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former communist, vetoed the law Dec. 12, saying it would give too much power to an institute created by the law to manage the files. And he said all Poles, not only victims of totalitarian regimes, should be able to see their files.

But the ruling Solidarity-led coalition was able to overrule the veto by promising amendments that could give opposition more say in appointing members of the Institute of National Remembrance.

On Friday, the powerful lower chamber, or Sejm, voted that institute members would be appointed by a 60-percent majority vote in parliament instead of simple majority. The Sejm also reduced the term of the institute's head from seven to five years. The amendments require approval by the Senate and the president.

Under the law, the institute will be charged not only with managing communist-era files, but also those relating to Stalinist and Nazi crimes. Besides making files available to victims, the institute also is empowered to launch investigations, which could lead to trials, into cases of political persecution and murders.

The issue of disclosing the past has divided Poles along political lines. The former communists are at the vanguard of the leftist political parties that oppose dredging up the past, arguing that the files are incomplete and full of misinformation.

However, figures from the powerful Solidarity movement that overthrew communism, including former President Lech Walesa, say the past must be confronted, even if that means government officials and others are victimized in the process.

Another bill that requires government officials to declare whether they ever worked for or collaborated with the former security service went into effect in November. Anyone making a false declaration could lose their job.

Poland's first attempt to open secret files was in 1992 by the rightist government of Prime Minister Jan Olszewski. But after lists of alleged secret agents were leaked, the government was toppled on a no-confidence vote.

During the communist era, the secret police used informers to monitor virtually all aspects of daily life and routinely cracked down on people suspected of anti-government activism. Accusations of who may have collaborated in the past continue to hound people in all areas of Polish society, including top government officials.

Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.